January’s Inspirational Guest Posts wrap up with Jeri Walker-Bicket, JeriWB to her friends. She’s a lovely soul, and I so enjoy getting an inside peek at her writing as her critique partner. I can tell you this lady is intelligent, elegant and methodical in her approach to literature and writing.
Jeri thank you for telling us about your Muse and Inspiration!
-Wren
Snap out of it! Only the least creative souls cannot find fault with such advice. Inspiration islike a drug, and when it fades, despair often takes its place. So many people slowly lose their creative spark by losing themselves to the mundane and incessant demands of daily life.Though I have always wanted to be a writer, a decade of devoting myself to teaching Englishzapped my writing soul.
Thankfully, opportunity knocked in the form of relocating to the other side of the country formy husband’s dream job. I guess it’s my dream job too, because I now finally have the time to pursue my neglected writing dreams.
I’ve spent the last year and a half reconnecting with that sense of wonder necessary to make me feel the motivation to write. Everything in life is a potential source of inspiration, but a person has to open themselves to the possibilities. I’m not the type of girl that waits for the Muse to find her. Like clockwork, I put my butt in my office chair and get to work!
In short, here are five methods I rely on to find inspiration:
Freewriting: I am trying to break myself of a bad self-editing habit, so freewriting to discover ideas helps. Specifically, I enjoy loop writing, which is a structured form of freewriting where the writer underlines strong lines and then starts a new prompt based on those lines.
Collecting Images: I used to collect photos from National Geographic and laminate them for use in classroom activities. Now I use them to get my creative juices flowing. An online image search can also accomplish the same thing, and my interest in Pinterest is gathering steam.
Overhearing Conversation: During a recent trip to NYC, while being herded like cattle to the top of the Empire State Building, an old woman gripping her walker cried out, “Is this the ride? I thought this was the ride! Is it going to start soon?” Immediately, I wondered, what’s her story?
Finding Objects: My grandmother’s collection of thousands of buttons is one way I trick my brain into wondering what type of character a button would belong to. An abandoned car, a ghost town, a lost baby doll. Everything is just a potential story waiting to happen.
Traveling: Going places is more or less my excuse to take photographs. Digital photos can be endlessly tinkered with, much like words can. I guess I find the world in all its infinite variety and my relative insignificance in it to be oddly comforting
Even with the gift of time afforded by a change in living circumstances, I still found myself at a standstill when it came to starting something new. Could I still write creatively? Would the sentences be clunky? I snapped out of self-doubt by rewriting five of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories and publishing them in an eBook titled Popular Poe Stories in Plain English. I also wrote many blog posts, which surely helped whip me once again find my writing way.
I’m no longer in a big rush to publish, but I am releasing a collection of literary short stories titled Such is Life. The fiction I am most drawn to bears the stamp of literary realism, though my work in progress, Lost Girl Road, is a psychological suspense story set in the woods of northwest Montana. The most helpful realization on my path to finding inspiration again is an awareness that I tend to draw too much from real life at times. Make of my stories what you will.
Basically, after all the much ado about nothing, I’ve found myself feeling creative again when Ifinally managed let myself go.
Jeri Walker-Bickett was born and raised in Wallace, Idaho, a rough and tumble mining town with a checkered past. The storytelling urge struck at a young age, but an undergraduate degree in writing led to a graduate degree in English education. Between living the scholarship-laden life of an academic bum, she did seasonal work in national parks. Jeri met her future husband in Yellowstone and they later married in Las Vegas. This phase in their lives sparked an obsession with food and travel. Fate has intervened to allow her to take time off from the classroom. Her forthcoming novel, Lost Girl Road, is a ghost story that takes place in the woods of northwest Montana. She currently lives in North Carolina with her husband and their pets.
Please visit her blog www.jeriwb.com for book reviews, editing services, and progress updates.
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The gift of time can be awesome, however I do understand how you found yourself at a standstill. I did the same. Starting anything new is a challenge.
I love your list of ideas and find I use many of the same things. 🙂
It definitely takes a while for me to pick up momentum, but at least I realize my habits, which helps tackle the ones that tend to hold me back.
I have only recently really gotten to find the value of pinterest. And I love found objects. In this age with cameras so readily available it is great to snap a pic of something you find that sparks thoughts when you least expect it.
Pinterest is exactly what I thought of when I saw that one, too! I have bunch of different picture boards for inspiration.
Jon, there’s almost nothing I would rather do than get lost with my camera. Thank goodness for Pinterest when it’s not possible to take my own, but I still love collecting magazine photos too.
Self-editing is a curse! I try not to do that myself. If we would just give ourselves the liberty to bang out what we’re feeling at the moment, ironically we’d find that we need to do much less editing of the finished product.
definitely, once you get in the flow things are amazing
Self-editing is a curse! I try not to do that myself. If we would just give ourselves the liberty to bang out what we’re feeling at the moment, ironically we’d find that we need to do much less editing of the finished product.
The gift of time can be a 2 edged sword. But I most definitely understand. I am waiting to read your latest. 🙂
Cheryl, I’m still revising and formatting it as I type this. It will be up on Amazon tomorrow or else!
Jeanette, one of my goals for this year is to definitely pick-up my pace and self-edit less. Still not sure if I’ll ever attempt NaNoWriMo, but a girl can dream 😉
Great interview, I really like the line, “Inspiration is like a drug, and when it fades, despair often takes its place”. It’s not something people talk about much, but it’s important to keep in mind. Zig Ziglar said something like people need motivation everyday just as they need to bathe everyday… makes it simple when it’s in those terms!
Dan,finding what motivates me has definitely helped keep despair on the back burner, but it still occassionally creeps up on me 😉
Your line about overhearing conversations reminded me of Harriet the Spy. When we were in 4th grade, my friends and I kept spy notebooks. We all wanted to be writers for a while. And then some of the boys discovered my spy notebook …
Leora, your spy notebook reminds me of the time in grade school all of the girls started to keep notebooks that we passed around and wrote about each other in. It quickly turned catty, and then yes, the boys got a hold of them too ;)We were inspired by one of the Sweet Valley High books.
Jeri – I’d say that the sources of inspiration you list are all good, but the best is the first: “put your butt into the office chair”. It seems all the writing pros that I read say that the most important part of writing novels is to show up, set aside a time to write, and then do it.
Larry, thanks for the encouragement. Butt in chair time is what I do all day every day… I just tend to get distracted by all the other facets of building an author’s platform.
Great Post! Since reading your blog posts, I’ve been thinking about things I wouldn’t have thought about before, such as book covers. Pictures inspire me to write poetry … and I once wrote a little thing from something written on a stall wall in a women’s public washroom. Awesome line, “Inspiration is like a drug, and when it fades, despair often takes its place.”
Denise, I used to have so much fun using pictures for poetry starters with students. Which reminds me I should check out your book of poems too 🙂
Hey Jeri
Thanks for the great post. It’s always interesting to discover where people draw their inspiration from. I’m also just getting into Pinterest and using it to trigger off ideas.
I love overhearing conversations and then finishing them off, ideally in an unexpected way. It’s a really effective way to ground dialogue and make it feel real. It also forces me to write in voices I wouldn’t normally use.
cheers
Mike
That’s interesting Michael, it makes me wonder if you have ever tried twitter? Pinterest is such a right brain technique. It doesn’t feel like work to me but my mind is going really hard.