Recently, while on a plane, I was talking to the person next to me and in his inebriated drool, he gave me an idea that can be a major plot point for a story I’m working on. That spurred me into thinking that of all the things that we as writers do to get ideas flowing. Most certainly, on the top of the list is taking inspiration from around us. There’s plenty of inspiration hidden all around and we just need to reach out and allow it into our lives. It may be by talking to strangers or reading new things or just carefully observing something commonplace.
Also, I recently did something different from my usual stance – I wrote for myself as an audience. Usually, when I write, I think of how I’ll publish it soon as I’m done with basic editing so that I can let my readers judge if the idea or post is good or bad. Well recently, I used a diary entry app to write something I’d usually publish on my blog. It felt very different in that the knowledge that I was the only audience changed how I reacted to the idea. I didn’t care much for syntax or spelling mistakes, letting Autocorrect fix what it could. I let the idea flow naturally instead of editing a sentence five times before it’s finished, the way I usually do it. I am really bad at editing text after the fact. It feels like tarnishing something sacred, even if it’s bad writing and that’s why all the editing I do during the writing part is all the editing most of my work ever gets. Thus, letting my writing style come out in full flow was a pleasant experience.
Finally, I’ve come to realize two things –
1. No matter how many writer-help books I read, they all seem to boil down to just one suggestion – Keep Writing.
2. No matter how much satisfying it is to talk about writing and how to do it and what are the best practices around it, nothing is as satisfying as actually writing and talking about it is no substitute at all because you end up thinking you’ve done so much about writing but it’s all just gas.
I’ll close with that and try to write something; if not for anyone else, then at least for myself.