Genre

I'm currently writing this on a sunbed in Majorca. I know I don't usually post on a Thursday and, frankly, I wasn't expecting to post at all this holiday. But lying here by the pool, people watching, gave me an idea.

How important is genre when we're writing? When you write, do you have a genre in mind? Does it inform your writing? Or do you ignore it entirely? Please comment below because I really want to know.

I like to think that I don't mould my writing to any particular genre, that I just write and see what happens and hope it's original. But today at breakfast I had an idea for a novel. A very vague idea that I won't bore you with. But, as often happens when I'm on holiday, the idea was quite girly. And I thought to myself I can't write this. It's too chick-lit-y.

But why should I deny myself a good story idea because I think it falls into a genre that is stereotypically defined as girly? Should genre matter when we're writing? And why do I feel like chick lit is an inferior genre that I shouldn't bother with? 

I have no definitive answer to any of these questions. I just find it sad that the very concept of genre has the potential to shape, or even, destroy our writing ideas. Please comment below. I'm interested in your thoughts.

Thanks for reading.

5 Great Ways To Get Inspired

As you can guess from the title, my intention for this week’s post was to write a list of the best ways to get inspired. I asked friends and peers, I asked on forums and even consulted Google. And out of all the many techniques I found, I have picked my five favourite to share with you.

However, whilst I was searching for the best way to get inspired, the most common response I encountered was that you can’t find inspiration, inspiration finds you. This obviously isn’t very helpful if you’re trying to inspire yourself to write for a deadline. But it does seem to be the case that the harder you try to find inspiration, the harder it is to find.

So this week I will give you five techniques that will help you get inspired if you are required to write something for a certain date. But my overall conclusion from the research I did for this post is that true inspiration cannot be manufactured. Rather than looking for it, you have to wait for it to find you.

You can help it along by reading a lot, paying close attention to the world around you and even trying out exercises like the ones I have suggested below. The best way to encourage inspiration is to just keep writing as much as you can (maybe you’ve noticed that it’s harder to think of story ideas when you haven’t written for a while). But true inspiration cannot be chased down. It will strike you when you least expect it. And the fiction that comes from that kind of inspiration will be the best you will ever write.

Nevertheless, if you are stuck for ideas, here are the five best techniques I found:

1. Look out of the window and write a sentence about the first thing that moves.

2. Make up a life for a random person you see on the street. This could also work with an                         image found online, but it’s often more inspirational to watch a real person living their                         day to day life.

3. Pay attention to a secondary character in a book or film and write a story from their                             perspective.

4. Free writing. For those of you who don’t know what this is, free writing is when you write                   for a certain amount of time, say five minutes, without stopping, thinking or planning. It’s                   often helpful to find a starting sentence or five words to include at some point in the free                     write to get you going. Free writes can be scary but they often turn out much better than                       you’d expect them to and can be an interesting method of idea generation.

5. Reinvent a scene from a book.

I hope some of you find this useful.

Thanks for reading. 

The Psychology of Inspiration

Sorry this blog post is a day late. I just got back to university and everything is a bit hectic. I promise, from now on, I will be on time. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one to have noticed how great procrastination is for creative writing.

If there’s something else I should be doing, that’s when I get most of my best writing done. Whereas, when I have to write a story for my coursework or for the uni newspaper that’s when I get complete and utter writer’s block.

Inspiration is all about psychology. For my first piece of creative writing coursework last term I had one of the worst cases of writer’s block I’ve ever had. And it got worse and worse the closer I got to the deadline. Luckily, my university allows us one free extension every term. I told myself I would use it and as soon as I was under the impression that I had at least one more week to get it done, I instantly thought of an idea for my story.

During exam time when I should be revising, I get more inspired than I ever do in my spare time.

I don’t think inspiration through procrastination is a bad thing. At least you’re doing something productive. But it did start me thinking about the psychology of inspiration. And I did some research.

There is surprisingly little psychological research into inspiration. But I did find one study entitled Inspiration as a Psychological Construct by Todd M. Thrash and Andrew J. Elliot that produced some interesting results.

According to this study, inspired individuals are more engaged with their environment and are more likely to be pursuing majors within the humanities (which is very good news for me). Inspiration also correlated positively with work mastery and creativity (as character traits) but negatively with competitiveness and fear of failure which explains why deadlines seem to sap our inspiration.

Inspiration positively related to perceived competence, self-esteem and optimism and also self-determination.

So in order for us to become inspired we need to believe that we can do well, we need to be creative people, engaged with our environment and optimistic. But we can’t be afraid to fail or judge our levels of success by comparing ourselves to others because that will introduce the competitive element which is apparently so bad for our inspiration.

So that’s the psychology behind inspiration. It wasn’t exactly what I expected to find when I started my research but I hope it can be in some way helpful.

Thanks for reading!

Open Mic Nights

Hey guys.

My piece of advice for you this week is a little different and not really about writing but more about what you can do with it.

A couple of months ago, I performed at an open mic night. It was involuntary: as a committee member for the creative writing society at my university I was obligated to read out some of my work. Before now I have always been far too much of a coward to even consider performing at any of the many open mic nights my university host.

I was terrified. But I swallowed my nerves, got up and did it. And it was the most fun I have had in a really long time. I am not exaggerating. Yes, I had consumed a fair amount of wine to calm the nerves, which probably helped, but the real exhilaration came from standing in front of a whole room of people and having them listen to something I wrote. It was an experience I’ve never had before. I’ve given my stories to family to proof read and I’ve handed them in as coursework or to short story competitions. But I’ve never had a whole room of people just looking and listening to me.

I would highly recommend performing in an open mic night to any creative writer. It’s such a wonderful atmosphere. People who attend open mic nights tend to be creative writers themselves so the audience is really supportive and encouraging. And listening to the other performers can be so inspiring. Just sitting in a café packed with other writers can make you feel more creative.

Next time you see an open mic night advertised near you, pluck out any old thing you’ve written, whether it’s old, new, completed or unfinished, and volunteer yourself. Just go for it. It’s definitely something I look forward to doing again and again over the next year. And it also gives you something to write for. If you find it hard to inspire yourself, the knowledge that you’re going to be showcasing your writing in front of a whole room of people and nothing you have is really good enough can be a great kick up the back side.

So that’s my advice for the week. Perform in open mic nights. And even if you don’t feel confident enough to perform just yet, attend them anyway. It’s such a great experience that will boost your creativity and your confidence in your own writing. If you do take my advice, good luck!

Thanks for reading.