Inspiration

Inspiration is one of those funny things. You never know where or how it will strike. Many writers feel that waiting for it is pointless and anyone wanting to be a writer needs to go out and find their ideas without it. Well, here are some thoughts on finding it.

How I Write

One of the most common, if not THE most common question writers get asked is “Where do you get your ideas?”

I know this, not because anyone has ever asked me, but because I’ve listened to a lot of interviews where long running, successful writers say they hear that question time and time again.

In a flourish of pre-emptive optimism, here is my answer:

What I Write

I told a little about why I write, or why I think I do. This time I thought I’d talk a bit about what I write.

My focus is Mystery, but that’s a deceptive term. The driving force behind any story is the desire to see what happens next. That makes everything a mystery in some form. We can’t even say that a mystery involved finding out who committed a crime. The TV series Columbo opened most of the time by showing the killer doing it. The rest of the program was spent watching the detective try to figure what the audience already knew. Yet, these were still Mysteries.

Still other stories are most certainly Mysteries but they contain some other element that puts them in a different genre.

If Agatha Christie’s And then there were None, sometimes called Ten Little Indians, would have been set on a space station instead of an island, it would have been Science Fiction. If that same story used dwarves and elves and been set in a cave or dungeon, it would have been Fantasy. The dialog and room descriptions would have changed, but the key plot points could remain intact regardless of time or place.

Many of the classic Science Fiction stories of Phillip K Dick were essentially mysteries that used fantastic technology to set up the crime. While making them Science Fiction as far as the world is concerned, it did not make the any of the stories any less of a Mystery.

When I say I write Mysteries I mean I write detective fiction. It may be set in the current world, an alternate, fantasy world, or a world of spaceships and aliens. To me, they are all mysteries. With that in mind, here are the main “worlds” I plan to use as settings.

Why a Writer?

I’m a writer.  At least, I want to be.

Did I always want to be a writer?  I’m not sure.  I remember watching Captain Caveman as a kid and seeing a couple of episodes that still hold up as crime plots in my grown up mind.  Even then, I thought it would be cool to steal, er, pay tribute through homage to, those plot ideas.  I was seven or so.  I remember watching Scooby Doo and working out ideas for the treasure where it was something totally unexpected.  Rather than a stash of Civil War gold, or a fortune in gems, why not some odd collectible item that would be cast aside by nearly anyone that found it?

I’m drifting a bit.

I look back to my life then, and I wanted to make stories.  I wanted to make them my way with characters doing what I wanted them to do.  But why?

I'm not Evil...

… I’m a writer.  At least I hope to be.

I often have ideas pop into my head that would make the average person cringe at the thought of them.  The opening credits to the TV show Castle feature the main character saying, “There are two types of people that sit around all day thinking of ways to kill people: psychopaths, and mystery writers.”  Personally, I’m not so sure it involves all that much sitting around and thinking to come up with the actual killing.  It’s the getting away with it that takes all the time.

When I say that the ideas pop into my head I mean it.  There are times that I’ll start talking to someone and form some elaborate demise as I’m talking, but have no idea where it’s going.  I’m thinking about five words ahead of what I’m saying, and when I finally get to the end, I get That Look.