Time for our monthly meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Hosted as ever by Alex J. Cavanaugh, the aim of the group is to offer a safe space where writers can share doubts and insecurities without fear of being judged. This month's co-hosts are Victoria Marie Lees, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre and C. Lee McKenzie.
Let's check out this month's IWSG question: Do most of your story ideas come from one place (the news, dreams, etc.) or do they hit from all over the place?
This is always an interesting kind of question and I wouldn't like to restrict my source of ideas, as I find good ones are at a premium - I'm not the kind of writer who's struck with flashes of inspiration multiple times of day! Dreams - it's happened once or twice but what I remember tends to be random with not much useable material. The news is a whole rabbit hole and I don't go trawling through it as that would be pretty draining but if something sticks out as intriguing I'll definitely make a note. Often if something is strange or I don't fully understand it I'll find myself pondering it for a while and that can spark an idea, even if it doesn't get followed through. Becaue I see writing mainly as my way of engaging with and making sense of the world, I'm drawn to those things that initially might not make a lot of sense. On the whole, though, most ideas come when I can let my mind wander such as when out on a walk. It's not really "out of nowhere" as it's a result of my brain percolating everything that's been thrown at it. And sometimes it's just an image or a character that presents itelf and I have to follow up. My current WIP started with an image of a girl waking up in a forest with no idea of why she's there. That one might have been a dream, but I can't actually remember now. I hadn't long been out of hospital and my brain was in a confused state of fugue. But maybe that opened me up more.
As for my own news, just plodding along as usual - I'm at 65k on the mentioned WIP so I'm slowly inching my way towards a completed draft, but it'll definitely be the messiest one I've ever done. At times the story has completely abandoned where I thought it was going and I'll go off on impulsive tangents that I never saw coming. It'll be very interesting to read back, but hopefully not horrifying. My MC is very strong willed so I'm letting her take the lead. I'd like to make more progress but find I can't manage more than 500 words per day currently. It's been just over a year with this draft, although I've stopped at times to carry out edits on previous work. I'll get there at some point.
I'm interested to read other answers to this great question and of course the answers will be found in the IWSG sign-up list here. See you next month (and I'll try not to miss it again!)
No comments:
Post a Comment