Hey hey hey!
Strangely enough, people seemed to find my last journal helpful. I mean, hell yes, I'm helpful! This is probably one of the things I'm helpful at because um yeah, I'm really unhelpful when it comes to things like math and how to tie fancy knots, etc.
Um first before I go into another rant/discussion I want to put on this journal a little disclaimer. Okay so, here goes. Um hi. I am not here to tell you how to live your life so if you find this offensive for some reason, sorry. Also I want to let you know right now that I'm probably the least eloquent person around. Honestly. So sorry if this sounds like a five year old wrote it.
So here we go. Inspiration part deux.
There are many, many days when I sit down and just read stuff online. A lot of the times I don't read stuff on mibba but sometimes I do. Anyway, everything I tend to read is about a billion times better than anything I could ever hope to write. (Stay with me, I swear I have a point...) Anway so afterwards, I open up document and try to write but nothing happens. I try to channel my inner brilliant author but I end up going downstairs, sitting on the couch and watching Comedy Central feeling sorry for myself.
Here's something that's really important to inspiration. It will totally die if you feel inferior to other writers. Everything you write will be sub-par to whosey-whatsey over there who wrote that thingy ma bob that made you sob like a baby. Even if it's not, you will feel like it is. It's not a bad thing to want to strive to be a better writer, but when stuff like that makes you too depressed to write anything just do what I do. Stop. Take a deep breath and close out of that window fast. Tell yourself you are an amazing writer. DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING.
Okay so that's that.
I would love to give you a magical pill that suddenly gives you all sorts of story ideas. People ask me all the time where I get my ideas and it's basically because I am a crazy person.
It's also because I'm an only child. I had to learn how to amuse myself for long periods of time. All through my elementary school days I played fairys with my friends and we all made up our own Sailor Moon scouts and made up huge elaborate storylines to go along with them...um okay, getting a little off topic here with my geeky lame-o days.
For me, I have really specific things that inspire me. Music. Art. Websites. I belong to a bunch of "inspiration" communities on livejournal, where people upload quotes, pictures and music that they love for other people. I'm also into really weird stuff like runes, alchemy, norse mythology, folktales, fairytales, voodoo, etc etc. You know that I'm into that because well uh, it's all in my stories.
I think the best piece of inspiration advice I can give you is to take what you know and love and just run with it. Let's say you like three different things: Irish folklore, the regency era and curses. You could turn all of that into a story (and it would be called Lament). If you need to, write down a list of things that interest you. It seems silly, but it will be helpful.
If you're like me and you write to music (actually sometimes I can't, it gets too distracting at times) find music that fits the mood of whatever you're writing. Writing Soliloquy made me listen to a lot of silly new-agey music that I probably wouldn't be into if I wasn't writing it. But the music inspired some of the best scenes.
If a song has inspired one part of your story, put it on repeat and even better, turn it down a bit. The song will play in the background and will just determine the mood of the story. I know, weird, right, but it works.
Okay well this was long.
But yeah. Good luck.
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