broadstairsbacc | Finding Inspiration (Reply)

Taken from my preparation for my 'talk'.

We all pick up on ideas every day – whether consciously or unconsciously. Something someone says or we overhear; something that happens to us; a picture, maybe something on Tumblr that a friend points out to us; an article someone suggests. These things are as individual as we are. We may choose to use them immediately; we may put them to one side for later use.

All of which is great and helps when we come to write, but doesn’t necessarily start us writing. Here I’m thinking of the people like me who write short things, not those who produce the 100,000 word epics, or who write multi-chaptered fics where each chapter is 5,000 words long. The most I’ve ever written is 14,000. I’ve triumphantly written two big bangs over 10,000 words, but generally I write ficlets or fics up to 5,000 words.

Which means I need inspiration much more often. So I’ve come up with some suggestions for what helps me and therefore something amongst the list may help others.

The comment_fic comm on LJ. Each day there is a set theme and anyone can prompt. It’s a really mixed bag. Obviously a lot of the bigger fandoms are represented, but there’s a significant number of ‘any fandom, any pairing, prompt’. Anyone can respond with a fill – it needs producing that day (although there is a lonely prompts day on Sunday) – so if you’re just looking for something to kick start your brain it’s worth looking at. And if you decide later that what you’ve written is rubbish, in a day or two it will be forgotten. It’s a great way to tackle fandoms you’ve never tried before, or even fandoms that you wouldn’t normally write. I’ve written a few things for Father Ted, for instance.

Another LJ comm I particularly like is fan_flashworks. Three times a month a prompt is given and you have ten days to write for it. Any fandom, any length. It was originally created to give new writers a chance to explore writing, and I find it really useful for working in new to me fandoms. I started by writing short pieces for Spooks, exploring the character of Lucas North. Every two months there is an amnesty post in which you can go back and choose any of the previous prompts. In addition you can work for badges. I was originally quite sceptical about that, but in fact I enjoy being awarded the pretty. Again it helps provide a bit of additional inspiration – here’s a prompt and I can work for a badge in a particular genre. Writers are asked not to post their work elsewhere until after the challenge closes, after which if you wish to you are free to post to AO3 or wherever. I find it low pressure – ten days is long enough to write something, even if some days of the week there isn’t time to write, but not long enough to stress about it.

Some people find inspiration for writing for something like the various forms of NaNo, or other month long comms, for example watsons_woes run a daily event in July. It doesn't work for me because I find having to write every day too stressful, when there are days when I can't write or can't post.

Exchanges can be fun, but choose wisely. We’ll all have the ones we enjoy. For me that’s the lewis_challenge and acd_holmesfest

Signing up just to pinch hit for an exchange is also worth considering if you don’t want to receive anything but fancy writing in that category. There’s also the advantage that if you do end up pinch hitting and you’re not entirely happy with the end result you can tell yourself that at least the recipient had something.

The important thing is to find the areas that work for you. I like a certain amount of structure, but nothing too constraining – there’s a reason that I blog on LJ ‘five times a fortnight’. One thing I enjoyed doing was offering to write prompt fics for my flist for the twelve days of Christmas – any fandom they knew I wrote in, any prompt. I also co-mod the ACDHolmes sherlock60 – where every week we write a 60 word drabble based on the ACD story of the week.