Ok. Let’s just come out and say it. Writing is romanticized, no ifs, ands, or buts. It’s a fact. It isn’t all sunshine and roses, and most people won’t make enough off of their writing to be able to hide away in a cabin in the woods or an English country house, in order to dedicate their lives to the joy of writing. Even if we can quit our day jobs, there are still other aspects of life that have to be tended. What about paying bills, and cleaning or maintaining the house? There should also be time for pets, family, and friends. I didn’t even mention obtaining food or sleeping.
Even if writing is our day job, there is still life. The world we are writing, no matter how much we want it to, can’t make the world we live in stand still. Life can often interfere with our ability to find the time to sit down and write large portions of our stories, no matter how enthused we may be about our world, characters, and adventure.
When this happens, our books can take much longer to write than we anticipate. Take my first book of my fantasy series for example. I had intended to finish it in a year, at most. My goal was more along the lines of getting two of the books written, at least, through the first draft with one ready to publish, all within the year. Was my goal too grand? I suppose that depends on whom you ask. Some people say you can have a book written in a month or two. Does NaNoWriMo ring a bell? Yet, that is usually considered a bit intensive, and sometimes the novels come out a bit low on word count (and actual readability).
When you are forced to take a year or more to write your story, all that excitement and enthusiasm tends to wane. This is not unreasonable, but it is still a problem. How do we keep from getting so discouraged that we struggle to get into the flow of writing during our stolen moments, or worse give up altogether? This will depend on the personality of the writer in question. However, there are several methods of motivation and inspiration preservation.
1. Accountability
This isn’t a fun method, but who said it was all going to be a day at an amusement park? Fun or not, this is one of the best ways of making sure we don’t decide to throw in the towel.
This all depends on whom you choose to be your accountability partner. If you choose someone who tends to be a bit forgetful, for whatever reason, odds are that they won’t be able to remind you of your goal as regularly as necessary. If you choose someone who only reprimands you because you didn’t meet your goal rather than taking into account the dog making a mess of the living room, the children coming down with the flu, or the oven breaking down; let’s just say, you might not feel too kindly towards your accountability partner before long.
To make a long story short, you need someone you can trust to be firm but not unreasonable in their role of holding you to your goal. You need someone who will give regular reminders without sounding like a cuckoo clock. If you know and respect them aside from their role as your accountability partner, that will help also. That way, you will already be thinking ahead to the next time they check in and how you don’t want to disappoint them or embarrass yourself.
2. Images
A picture is worth a thousand words, right? This is exactly what we are going for. The goal here is to search for images that embody bits of your inspiration. Look around for various bits of scenery, characters, emotions, and ideas. Look for photographs or various forms of artwork.
One of my favorite places to search for inspiration images is Deviant Art. Now, of course, make certain you separate all images into categories of whether they are free to use or copyrighted. That way, you can be certain of which images you can only use for inspiration.
Here are some links to images that I use for inspiration keepers for my current writing project:
https://www.deviantart.com/ylum/art/Dark-lands1-Cure-wounds-896566781
https://www.deviantart.com/r3darch0n/art/Selene-Darkwood-962736618
https://www.deviantart.com/nele-diel/art/Forest-Village-662495403
3. Movie clips
This might seem a little bit like a rip-off but only if you use whole ideas. What you do is take an aspect of a clip; something that triggers your imagination. Then, you shift things around, and make it unique. You can even mix and match with other scenes from the same show or from different shows. Different is better. When you use any previous work as inspiration, you want to make a unique story, not plagiarize. Keep these clips available to trigger that one aspect of your inspiration you are looking for.
2&3 b. Actors
I’m not counting this as an item in and of itself because it’s so closely related to items two and three. This is what I mean; you will likely want to collect either images, movie clips, or both.
Is there an actor or actors you see when you try to envision one of your characters? This doesn’t mean that your character has to be exactly any one actor. Possibly, your character has Claudia Black’s face, Barbra Streisand’s voice, and Glenn Close’s presence. For good measure, you could include Betty Davis’ eyes. (Is that last over doing it? What do you think? Leave a comment below.)
Then again, another character might have, Jeffery Dean Morgan’s flirty smile, Robert Carlyle’s sassy head waggle, Colin Morgan’s lanky form, Benedict Cumberbatch’s intense eyes, and as the cherry on top, your character is capable of that look of all-consuming adoration as seen from Toby Regbo.
With these examples, I hope you see that one could choose to envision their character with a form like Manu Bennett or Robert Carlyle instead of Colin Morgan. You might think Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice might suit your character, while intense eyes don’t matter so much. If you thought your female character needed more of a Lindsay Duncan vibe, no problem. It’s all a mix and match, and the more you mix, the more unique your character comes out and the fuller your mental sight becomes.
What actors would you cast in your stories and why? Let me know in the comments below.
4. Music
I doubt there will be many naysayers when I say that music can trigger a whole range of emotions, ideas, and images. The music you choose, of course, depends on the genre you are attempting to write. This music can be instrumental or with lyrics.
I find that lyrics often trigger more inspiration for me, but that is because words have power as well. Blend the power of music with the power of words, and you have a potent mix.
Imagine Dragons (not going to tell which songs) has inspired scenes for two stories that I have to put on the back burner while focusing on the present writing project. “Flares” helps me keep a characters inner struggle from another back-burner-project in mind so that I don’t lose it. “King of the world” by Warhall inspired a scene for one of my villains in my current project. No, I won’t reveal which villain.
5. Sayings
This can be good for both motivation and inspiration.
For motivation, look for sayings that bring up feelings of determination, a can-do attitude, or even a saying that attaches pleasure to writing.
For inspiration, look for sayings that encapsulate an idea or theme for one of your book’s scenes, or for the book itself. If you can find sayings that represent your book plus various scenes, all the better. You can look for sayings from shows, books, or just general sayings. You can even use song lyrics as I basically, if not directly, suggested in the previous item.
Those are my top five, but I have a few points I want to cover before wrapping up this post.
While the accountability partner is something you can put into effect right away, the collection of material for the other four might take a while. In fact, it’s likely to progress gradually over the course of your writing. It should not be something you sit down to do for hours on end, keeping you from the task of actual writing. That would only make the writing take longer and compound the problem we are trying to alleviate.
Only make time for an initial collection run of one hour tops. Make sure you don’t spend more than thirty minutes at any one time collecting materials. You should probably make sure that the collection sessions occur once every few days at most. After your first general collection, it would also be best to make follow up collection sessions when you have something specific in mind, such as ‘mage protective magic image’ or ‘saying about the power of love’ or ‘tropical alien world image.’
I keep these inspiration holders in files that are labeled with the working title or a descriptor of the writing project they are for. This way everything is neat and tidy, so I don’t have to go searching through my music, or images for inspiration I already found.
I hope these top five inspiration and motivation tips will help you keep your goal fresh and in the forefront of your mind, so that you can continue to enjoy the wonder.
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