Subway Car Is a Writers’ Workshop on the Way to Queens and Back
I like this. Writing away from where you normally write. Room changes. Air changes. Scenery changes. People around you. No one around you.
Doesn’t matter where you are or where you’re going. In situ writing.
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People that inspire me? Good question.
I’m not going to answer with a long list of celebrities, authors or anyone reknowned because, to be honest, I find there are so many other people out there that inspire me for all sorts of reasons and not just for my writing. Some inspire me to change. Others inspire me to act. And others inspire me to look at life with a more simpler solution.
Often the ones that inspire me most are the people at the farthest reaches of the age spectrum. Because if you notice, there seems to be a certain serenity and happiness that resides in those years. So the question for me is, how do I bridge that gap and retain what it is about youth that makes it so carefree and open and joyful, and connect to the peace of knowing that life was lived well on the other end?
Stories grow from random details. We say all the time, “that would make a cool story” or “that would make a cool first line.” Save those thoughts and build on them. You don’t need inspiration for a full story right away. It just needs to start you thinking.
Write down great lines when you hear them. I have a “Great Lines” file that has all the awesome lines I’ve heard or thought of but don’t know what to do with. Snippets of dialog, a bit of description, whatever it is, save it, because that line could spark something greater one day. Or be the perfect piece for a problem you’re struggling to work out.
Sometimes you have to take a step back from what you know to find what you need. I still use that today when I’m stuck on a plot. I forget about what I “know” has to happen and think about what could happen. And then the ideas come.
”I’m editing and rewriting, seeing the scene unravel, listening to others speak, looking at body language, and wishing I could be in it, drinking, arguing, and hanging out with my protagonist.
Matteo Pericoli’s drawings detail the views that inspire writers and artists
I love this article not because it buys me more time as an unpublished, first-time novelist, but because Susanna nails her description of the exact mire I am trying to swim out of but could never fully understand or identify — the “state of active non-accomplishment.”
I do hope you’ll read this because it does not only pertain to writers, but artists of all types. Tomorrow, I start to recapture each day lost…
“Named for the 8th Century Chinese poet Li Po (Rihaku in Japanese) of whom it was said ‘He drinks a big bottle of sake and writes a hundred poems.’”
Didn’t work for me… though I guess it doesn’t specify if he wrote 100 straight afterwards.
Dipped in Walden Pond this weekend. It didn’t inspire me writing-wise. Instead, I wondered if a triathlon might be in my future.
