It's time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you'd like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let's rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
May 3 question - When you are working on a story, what inspires you?
Everything. Absolutely everything. In every book I read. Every podcast I listen to. Every movie I watch. In every conversation I have. Every walk. Every shower. Every change in the weather. Every song on the radio. Every scenic view of nature. Every person or animal I observe. Every glint of the sun on the waves. Every sweet-smelling rose. While I am in the zone working on a story, it's as if I become magnetic, drawing in a plethora of observations each day. Sometimes they are the most ordinary things, which a moment ago were lifeless. Mundane situations take on a new meaning and inform me in new ways. Suddenly, I feel driven to jot notes. As a book progresses, the folder of scribbles grows bigger and more detailed. The piles of notes slowly surround my laptop, stacking up on my desk. While working on a story, the ideas don't stop. Jottings spread throughout the house, appearing scrawled sideways up the calendar, written on the backs of envelopes, and random receipts, odd scraps of paper - which I then have to save. They keep coming. By the time I finish a book, I have tons of scribbled notes everywhere and will spend half a day trying to figure out if I can bear to part with any of them. If there are ideas I haven't used, which often is the case, then I might use them for future books, so how can I throw them away? This is why I have plastic tubs full of manuscripts and all their accompanying folders of notes stacked in storage. I never know when I might need to use them.
When I did Tiffany Lawson Inman's writing class, Method to Madness, with the Lawson Writer's Academy in 2012, we did various writing exercises. As a trained Method actor, Tiffany applied the techniques actors use to relax and get into character as a way for writers to get into the zone and let the inspiration flow.
"Tension is a creator's worst enemy," Tiffany taught us. We learned to use relaxation techniques and exercise as the key ways to access our creativity. We learned it was important to exercise daily. The combination of moving the body to get the blood flowing and then relaxing completely worked like a magic formula to unlock creativity.
One of the writing exercises Tiffany gave us was to describe ordinary moments in exponential detail. The idea is to take an ordinary moment like sipping a cup of hot chocolate, and slow it down, noting every single possible aspect, from the appearance of the cup and the liquid, to the aromas, to the feel of the cup, the liquid, and write down every minute aspect we could garner.
It was a good way of unlocking perception, and always had the result of sparking my creative thoughts or, as my grandmother used to call them, the "inspired whatevers."
There is something about being inspired by what you do that generates more inspiration. And then it is like tapping into the fountain of eternal youth or the never-ending porridge pot, the fodder, the creativity continues. I feel as if I go from zero to a hundred in a minute. Or is it that the ideas - the sparkles - are always there, but we are not normally open to noticing them? Then, when it is time to work on a story, is it that we allow ourselves to open the portals, and all the input flows in?
Either way, once underway on a story, I usually feel overwhelmed with ideas from every corner. The "inspired whatevers" feel infinite, exciting, and fabulous.
What about you? What inspires you?
Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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"Can I persuade you that physical tension paralyzes our whole capacity for action, our dynamism, how muscular tension is connected to our minds," said the acting teacher Konstantin Stanislavski.
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