Story Inspiration Sunday

Ramblings, , ,

I blog about inspiration both here and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either over here or there!

This week I was in San Francisco, for the day job. I had to stay at a hotel pretty far from downtown, but luckily, the company provided free buses into the city.

On Wednesday, the traffic was pretty awful when I was going in. The little signs that tell you how long it will take to get to downtown? All the other days it had been less than 10 minutes. On Wednesday, it was more like 45.

This was after we’d already been on the bus for over 30 minutes.

So I had a lot of time on my hands.

Recently, I’ve been doing some long-range planning, what I want to write. I have a whole bunch of novels that I already have sketched out.

On this extra long bus ride, I started listing out all the short stories.

Then, I started poking at one.

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Story Inspiration Sunday

1 CommentRamblings, ,

I blog about inspiration both here and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either here or there!

Fall has officially come to Seattle.

Me — I love fall. It’s my favorite season. I love the change of colors, I love the crisp air. I’ve even come to love the rain.

Today we got serious rain. Normally, the Seattle rain is more of a drizzle. Today, we’ve had a serious downpour. I’ve been watching it, listening to it, being inspired by it.

Not by the pouring down of it, no, but the sound.

Seattle Rain

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Story Inspiration Sunday

1 CommentRamblings, , , , ,

I blog about what inspires me both here and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either here or there.

There are lots of things that inspire me to write, like fashion and weird photography and poetry and food and things.

For the month of August, I’ve been doing a challenge. Basically, it’s writing 3000 words per day, every day, for the first 20 days of the month, so I’ll finish a 60,000 word novel in August.

Sounds crazy, right?

But I’ve done it so far. In the first ten days of August, I’ve written 30,000 words.

What’s my inspiration? How do I sit down at my writing computer, day after day, and come up with things?

One of the things that’s made this challenge easier for me was a talk given by the brilliant Matt Buchman. He’s been a project manager for 30 years, and he gave a presentation on applying some of those principles to managing your inner writer.

As I do a lot of project management for my day job, I was really interested.

One of the questions Matt asked was, “Why do you write?”

I actually didn’t find that question, by itself, that useful. Why I write is personal, and quite frankly varies from project to project. Instead, I had to break that question into two questions: “Why do you write” as well as “Why do you share.”

Me–the second answer, is both obvious and entertaining, and has been a huge part of my inspiration for getting my butt in the chair and writing 30,000 words this month.

And here’s the hint:

love boat

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Story Inspiration Sunday

Ramblings, ,

Today, I figured I’d turn back to one of my first loves, fashion. I also do these blogs over on the Book View Cafe blog. Feel free to comment here or over there.

ElleThailandBird

I adore the way her skirt flares up, how like a bird she is, and yet, so powerful. Though she’s in black, and backlit, my first thought is, “how do I take such a being who is poised for evil and portray her as good”?

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Story Inspiration Sunday

1 CommentRamblings, , ,

I blog about this both here and over at Book View Cafe. Feel free to comment either here or over there.

When I moved into my house about three years ago, I had no idea that I was horribly allergic to a plant in the front yard.

I didn’t find out about it until after I’d been there a year. I had spent most of a Sunday puttering in the yard, both in the front and the back. Later that night, my arms itched and hurt. When I finally stopped to look, I found I had welts running across them. It looked as though I’d been whipped.

It wasn’t until I brushed up against the demon plant a second time that I was able to pinpoint the culprit.

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Story Inspiration Sunday

Ramblings,

People always ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Honestly, for me, most of the time the answer is, “No frigging clue.”

For example, my latest novel, “The Guardian Hound.” I was toward the very end of writing “The Raven and the Dancing Tiger” and I wrote two sentences, just two, and then I had to put my pen down because the entire novel of “The Guardian Hound” sprang into my mind.

That’s generally how I get my ideas for a novel — the whole thing comes as one package: I see the beginning, some scenes in the middle, and the ending. I have no clue how to get from the start to the end, that’s why I have to write it down. But the whole thing just appears out of nowhere.

For short stories, it’s different. I frequently just find the time to write a short story, or I am invited into an anthology, and then I have to poke around for inspiration. I rarely get just a short story idea.

Hence, these posts.

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