Inspiration - Music

We all know music is a huge source of inspiration for YA writers. It's a trend, I think, started by Stephenie Meyers' avowed love of Muse. But it continued because YA and music are such a natural fit. Dozens of authors have thrown in on how music moves them to write (Kody Keplinger and Kate Hart have great blog posts about it...today actually, which is a weird coincidence!). But I love book playlists so goddamned much I had to do a post about it. Plus, I only started writing because of a song.

Come with me on a magical journey. It's dead winter of 2009, and I'm spending most of my days and nights fighting through the freezing wind whipping up from the Atlantic ocean. Boston is at its most formidable (and horrible) - every day the horizon is nothing but bare branches sinking their talons into slate gray skies. I'd really like to write a book about this lonely, awful place. Trouble is, I have no idea what it's about.

Boston being sexy, by moi

The summer before, my best friend gifted me Coldplay's Viva la Vida as a graduation present. I fucking hated "Clocks" more than any song on the planet, so it took me six months to listen to the album. But one day, "Violet Hill" came on my iPod. I still remember standing on the dark street, snow falling all around and my peacoat buttoned up to my chin, listening.

Took my love down to violet hill
There we sat in the snow
All this time she was silent still
If you love me, won't you let me know
If you love me...won't you let me know

By the time the song ended, a story was swirling in my head. The girl had a secret that was tearing her apart, but the lyrics only hinted at. Girl comes to Boston to find the boy she loves. But she can't tell him the truth, not about her love, and not about something far more dangerous. In time, the story adopted several other songs, which I'll share eventually. But the book will always revolve around that one song that left me asking, "But what is it? What can't she tell him?"

Songs are scraps of emotion, vividly expressed. They leave us mostly with questions - why this feeling? why this fear? Writers love music in part, I think, because we write our books to answer its questions.

 

The video sucks, so just hit play and AVERT YOUR EYES. Don't let Chris Martin's mouth ruin it for you! STUPID CHRIS MARTIN!

Inspiration - Place

Okay, well, my ambitious plan to blog from China completely failed, for 3 reasons: 1. Jetlag, 2. Spotty internet access, 3. China's lack of open container laws, which equaled lots of drunken stumbling down the streets of Shanghai. The upside is that now I can use China to write about how places can inspire us.

For me, place is always the initial genesis of any idea. When I walk into a beautiful or mysterious place, my mind instantly starts filling it with stories. Like these places are so full of longing and drama in their very stones, only the human emotion of a story can do them justice. Transporting the reader to these places is a vital part of any fiction writing. I fully accept that there are geniuses out there who can make up fantastic places in their minds. But for non-geniuses like myself, traveling, taking photographs and just plain getting out of the house are the first steps in creating evocative settings.

Photos by the inestimable Geoff Gailey

These are some photos from the wind whipped steps of the Great Wall an hour outside of Beijing. Before I went here, I might have described a ruin as crumbling stones. Boring, blah. But after actually being there, I know what it looks like when the narrow trunks of trees crack neat rows of cobblestones and pound the stone to fine gray dust. I know how black-backed beetles sit flicking their wings at the top of abandoned staircases, the only life for miles as the walls fade into the horizon, hazy with smoke from the burning fields far below.

Place is why writing will never be an all-day butt-in-chair affair (not even with Google Images!). Humans are visual creatures, and to create settings that our readers can see, we must first see with our own eyes. I hope the way I felt at the Great Wall will someday become a story. I know I felt the same way when I walked through the dark streets of Boston just as the first cold of fall was coming on. That feeling became my novel, Petrified, and even when the sun is out, the story (I hope) retains that chill.

What places have inspired you?

Inspiration

Some people say that the hardest part of writing is editing, some plotting. For others it's just plain applying ass to chair. But for me, the toughest step has always been the first: finding your inspiration. That singular idea you can't ignore, that starts as a tickle in the back of your mind and becomes an opus in the space of your walk home. Exciting times, and terrifying too. Is it a stupid idea? Unoriginal? Will my friends and family think I'm insane/boring/ripping off Twilight?

Inspiration is a lot like love. Once you're about 20K words in, you and your manuscript get comfortable with each other. Like any relationship, you fight sometimes, go without talking for days on end, pass lazy afternoons in front of the TV. But the beginning is complete infatuation. It still makes my heart pound to remember those first dizzying weeks of inspiration. I remember feeling out of breath and slightly queasy, staring for hours on end at two pages of ideas in single-spaced text and the cursor blink blink blinking at the end, like it's saying "Yeah? What next?"

Inspiration can come from anywhere: dreams, places, people, even other books (as long as you're not too inspired by them, ha). I've been thinking a lot about this lately - about how bad things, hard times, strange experiences can be the best inspiration - so over the next week, I'd like to spend some time thinking about where ideas come from.

P.S. I'll be blogging all this from China! Whoo!

Stand Up While Writing!

Prepare for the science journalist in me to come out. Ready? Okay - Scientists have known for years that sitting all day is bad for your health. Even when they have similar weights, diets and exercise habits, people who spend more time sitting have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and other nasties. So what's a good writer to do? We've still got to pump out our 1000-2000 words per day, weak sniveling circulatory systems be damned.

The answer of course, since I gave it away in the title, is to stand up while you write. It'll keep the pounds off, the blood circulation up and ensure that you'll still be writing best-sellers well into your gnarly nineties. But it can also help your brain. Ever notice that when you get a flash of inspiration, you jump up and crouch over your keyboard with your arms bent at weird angles like a T-Rex feasting on the carcass of a Greatideaosaurus? It's completely natural to stand up while doing something creative and mentally taxing. Sitting is great for perusing blog posts, but for writing the thrilling final chapter of your opus, you gotta take a stand.


Apparently there are no good pictures of typing dinosaurs on the internet.

There's all sorts of nifty desk gadgets out there to help you do this. Most are above my price range (about $10), at least until I move into my new apartment. But I've written on top of dressers, book shelves, and, unwisely, my stove. Risk of spontaneous computer immolation aside, it feels great and most importantly helps me write more and write better. Without the heart disease!

Charles Dickens Wrote Web Comics

So Oliver Twist was basically a web comic.  The reason people put up with what was essentially a young adult fairy tale by a debut author was the same reason people watch Two and a Half Men: It was free.  Like a web comic, no one really had to commit to it; people just checked it once every couple of months - kind of like Dresden Codak.

Oliver Twist was published in 24 installments in a literary magazine from 1837-1839, which I think goes a long way towards explaining why it reads like your Victorian granny's diary if your Victorian granny saw lots of people get hanged. Look at this installment in the 1838 Bentley's Miscellany - each chapter is seriously like: oh Harry teaches Oliver how to write to-day, then the next one is like Rose and Harry all declare their love for each other.  At which point rabid fans wrote Dickens letters like, "OMG! rpse and harry are teh cutestEVER  lolz!!!!!!!" Thus, Oliver Twist was basically a web comic, or at least a bad 19th century sitcom.

Unlike Oliver Twist, books by new authors these days aren't free, so readers don't have the chance to try them out in little bite-size pieces. Web comics are awesome, but a significant percentage of their awesomeness comes from the fact that it's the advertisers paying for them. You might buy one of their t-shirts, but you get a t-shirt out the deal, plus certified wearable proof that you are a huge hipster.  Same thing goes with a lot of TV shows - most are fairly crappy, which is why TV executives know we'll only watch them if they're free. Books, on the other hand, just keep getting more expensive. Some people (not me) might say, why pay to read when you can look at pictures for free on the internet? (not porn)

Oliver Twist was free.  AND it had pictures:

Then Mr. Bumble gets yelled at by Strawberry Shortcake and oh
fuck it I have no idea what's happening in this book.

Real Life vs. Writing Life

Despite some very good intentioned vows to blog regularly, I have totally failed to post here for the past two months. I have a good reason, though: I (finally) got a full-time job.

At first, I had mixed feelings about it. It's a wonderful job working in wildlife conservation, something even more important to me (and the world) than books.  I wanted to be writer since I was 12. I wanted to save animals since I was 6.  So I guess this dream has seniority.

But I miss being able to write all day long every day. Sure, it sucked when we couldn't pay the rent and my boyfriend begged me to get a job as a barista. But before he came home, my days were endless, free-wheeling riots of imagination. I came up with ideas for and started no less than 5 new books.  And I miss it.

Now, here's where the "mixed" part of my "feelings" comes in: Even after my six month wonderland of writing, I'm happier working.  Even with my 1.5 hour commute because we fail at finding a new apartment, I'm happier now in my little office than I was at home.  Because I love getting out, living, contributing to the world.  Not just the fantasy worlds in my head.

But here's the silver lining to the cloud that's already pretty fluffy and awesome: Working makes us better writers too.  Why?  Because you have to interact with lots of different people and see all the struggles in the world before you can write well.  Do you think Kurt Vonnegut would have been a quarter as trenchant if he hadn't worked as a used car salesman first?  Hell no!

Plus, I get to spend all day learning about these:


African Wild Dogs :)  Dying in Zimbabwe :(



Saigas :)  Dying in Uzbekistan :(



Cheetahs :)  Dying in Botswana :(

(I realize that one line about not being able to pay the rent makes my life sound like a huge bummer.  But it's not!  Actually, the times when I've been dirt poor have been some of the happiest of my life. Hm.  I think there might be a post in there.)

A Flawed Love Letter to Boston

I moved to Boston in 2008 to start my spectacularly ill-advised masters in journalism. Even if the degree was a disaster, I'm grateful for the chance to have lived in such a beautiful city. Boston has this strange, lovely quality of oldness, like everything is frozen in the chilly air and has remained, unmoved for 300 years. No other place in America feels so ancient.

I wanted my book to be a love letter to Boston. In hindsight, I know I'm not a talented enough writer yet to evoke everything I love about the place. But if I can't make sweet literary love to Boston, I figure I can at least post a few photos of the city that inspired me so much. Photos are by the inestimable Geoff Gailey, and by the easily estimable myself.

The Arlington Street Church over the Public Gardens

Boston's sewers! Who knew waste disposal could be so epic?

Easily the nation's sweetest alleyways.  So creepy.

The Central Burying Ground in the Boston Common.

I keep telling myself that when I get good enough to do Boston justice, I'll move back. That, or I'll go broke and move into my Grandma's basement in Waltham, MA. You know. Either way.