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What inspires us to write?
What is it that shapes our writing?
Influencing how we spit out words in the personal order and style to create the sentences, paragraphs and chapters that we do?
We rarely look back as writers.
Constantly looking forward to an often, as yet undefined horizon.
Hunting down ideas.
Pinning them down as the butterfly collected nets their colorful flutter and pins it to a card.
Dissecting the ideas down to their individual components...
and from those barely re-connectable scraps,
fashioning something special, wonderful, magical.
Yes, as writers we rarely look at how
and why you do it...
mainly because we're too busy actually doing it.
So what inspires you?
What images, words, music, thoughts, have shaped you?
Have made you the creative human that you are...
the writer that you are?
I first became aware of books and the magic that they hold as a five year old sitting on a hard parquet wood floor with other five-year-olds from my school infant class.
Listening to our Primary School teacher read from glued spined pages...
which when you think about it are no more than torn asunder and pulped trees inked with words.
Inked with words, but creating magic.
Were we really sitting on a hard wooden school floor?
Surely it was in a forest clearing overlooking Cair Paravel?
I swear that I could smell the Pine needles.
No man made floor at all...
but the rich Tobacco brown earth bleeding through the snow as eternal Winter retreated to Aslans Insistent roar.
The Narnia of CS Lewis's,
'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' had not just beckond me, it had
ensnared me and bound me in its magic until this day.
And to the power of writing and books, for life.
I could write a treatise,
a lengthy analysis of the wonderful 'Narnia Chronicles.'
Within it's carefully constructed pages, the Christian story.
The imagined and chaotic aftermath of World War Two and how it came about.
But even then, as a little bullied Jewish kid, that book had taught me about the power of storytelling.
The power to transport you to a different time, an undiscovered walk, a new world with exotic characters to meet.
And above all, for me to realise that within the simple rearranging and careful conjuring of words that entertain and thrill...
you can make known, camouflage,
express and explain more complex themes and ideas in a palatable fashion.
A method that I have, unapologetically, taken up in my own novels.
Spurned human rights atrocities,
trampled over laws and universal understandings...
in the nutshell and structure of a political crime thriller.
This thinking, this approach,
maybe surprisingly, was re-enforced by Douglas Adams,
'The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.'
Vast and sometimes very, very small but incredibly insightful ideas,
in an almost 'throw away' manner...
underlying the text.
Hidden in the gaps between the words...
massive ideas, huge questionings.
A comedy SciFi paperback,
that rocked me back on my heels.
SciFi and comedy?
Surely oil and water...
a cocktail that can't mix?
And so for me and my debut novel...
a good man, a detective,
fighting for human rights in a country where their are and can be none?
Surely oil and water...
a cocktail that can't mix?
It can... the art is making it believable and doing it well.
Since then, there have been many creative works that have,
sometimes with soft fingers or harsh hands...
influenced me, taught me,
bullied and sculpted me into the human, thinker and writer that I am today.
A bombardment of creativity that surely we should welcome with open arms...
in whatever medium they come to us in.
Beethovens 9th Symphony and Mikhail Sholokhov's,
'And Quiet Flows the Don,'
has taught me that it is okay to cry and how to express that on the written page.
How in a paragraph that you wish to have an emotional impact on your reader, you not only need to pick the right words in the correct order for your writing, but in framing that paragraph to get the full emotional impact on the reader, you need to consider many other things.
What is the perfect setting to frame this paragraph in?
The pace and rhythm of your writing, as with music, can impact your readers psychology and physiology.
It can raise or slow down their Heart rate. It can make them feel uneasy, tense or soporific.
You need to encompass your reader in the World that you have created.
So... I always consider smells.
Intrusive or background sounds.
The weather...
a storm will alert and tense your reader. A hot sunny day will lull them into a gentle peace.
The light...
daylight can convey openness and trust. Night can summon forth tension, uncertainty and fear.
And in it all of it,
always 'showing, not telling.'
Steinbeck's, 'Cannery Row...'
with its authentic characters who, right from the 'get-go,'
you invested on.
Needing them to prosper in life and love.
Michael Mann's film, 'Heat... '
exposing how in so many ways the psyche and lifestyle of criminals and those who plot their downfall,
can run in close parallel lines.
Sinatra and Sia's often longing,
pained and haunting vocal gymnastics and lyrics...
aiding my ability to get beneath a characters skin.
To that which counts and which whispers subtly into a readers ear.
These were my University creative writing courses.
My in-depth lectures on sculpting unforgettable characterisations.
Their depth.
Their multi-faceted personas.
And not needing pages of description to do this.
Just a hint of darkness.
The ghost white crescent of a scar.
A word unsaid, but still almost dripping from her lips.
Using timing in your writing.
An odd, jarring movement or act,
saying so much because of it's surprising timing or ferocity...
saying so much about the feral creature that lurks just beneath the thin veneer of tanned skin.
And always remembering...
'Less is more.'
Victor Hugo's, 'Les Miserable.'
George Orwells, '1984' .
'The Three-Body Problem,'
by Liu Cixin.
All informing me as a human being who writes, the power of the human spirit over adversity.
That true valour and bravery is rarely seen in a physical and viewed way.
It is hidden in one's internal life.
Locked into your own internal dialogue.
An often fractured voice that we all hear, but as writers rarely put in ink on the page.
These works taught me the power of those hidden voice that drives desperation foward and into action.
In my writing, which is focused on many stark and edgy themes,
I decided to bring this foward.
The internal thoughts and hidden voices, brought into the light of day.
Again, 'less is more, '
is the best way of doing this.
I found.
A splinter of a sentence.
A shard of thought.
And suddenly you're in your main characters head.
A 'zooming in' affect to know their inner most fears, thoughts, tortures.
It offers a great immediacy to your writing.
An urgency.
It puts the reader suddenly in their characters head.
The very opposite to that which is the normal writer and character dynamic...
where the character is very much,
in a haunting manner, packed inside of the writers head.
It's an exhilarating technique for the writer to use...
and for the reader to be a part of.
If, done well!
My greatest learning lesson that has shaped my writing thinking and practice,
has come from the fantastic writer and thinker Kurt Vonnegut...
particularly from his novel,
'Breakfast of Champions.'
In that novel, Vonnegut descends from the literary Ether and reveals to his main character, the beautifully drawn Kilgore Trout...
that he is nothing more than that of a his main character in a novel.
A figment of his, the writers imagination.
Not a human at all, but just squiggles of ink on paper.
It was a thunderbolt to Trout,
as you can imagine, who thought of himself as a sentient being.
It was also a revelation to me,
as a writer.
For the first time I realised that I am my creations, my characters God.
Not in a religious or egotistical sense, you understand...
but in a real and practical sense.
As prior to me tapping on my keyboard, they simply hadn't existed.
I am also their worlds architect, building it, shaping it in any way that I wish.
In my writing, and only my writing,
I am Omnipotent and Omnipresent.
Those thoughts liberated me!
I suddenly was not only free to create in a more untethered and biundaryless fashion,
but was able to take onboard that if I wrote myself Into Cul-de-sac...
I could un-write that scene and free myself and my characters.
If my scene clearly needed the entry of a new major or minor character,
I could simply create and breathe life into one.
If I discovered a 'plot hole' in my manuscript, I could just fill it or suture it closed.
I was totally in charge.
It made me take full responsibility for my writing and how I approach and fashion it.
But being a God can be problematic!
It is very much a Two edged sword.
With freedom comes responsibility.
In being a God to my characters and the world that I had built...
came certain needs and expectations.
I had to draw my world,
my characters,
as keenly as a literary God could do.
I had to have a respect for that which I had created.
A care for my characters.
As any writer who has written a novel knows...
you live with a your characters for a very long time in the boney confines of your cranium.
As you build their lives, they become a part of your life.
And when you complete your novel,
you go through a not insignificant bereavement process!
It made me realise that as a writer you simply have to take full responsibility for how, why,
and what you create.
It's interesting, that as the founder and sole admin of THE WRITERS FORUM, a very dynamic writing group of over 200,000 members,
the majority of posts that I receive are about problems that writers have.
'I've found a plot hole, what do I do?
'Help...I'm in a mess, my story makes no sense?'
'I'm stuck... I don't know what to write next?'
My answer now (thanks Kurt)
is simple and yet complex...
'you created it.
You are it's God.
Fix it!'
A harsh response?
No, not at all.
A stark but exciting reality.
So... a lot of great literature, film, music and a Million other things have shaped me, as they've shaped you.
Be open to them.
Examine them.
Turn them up and down,
inside and out.
Shake them up.
Tear at them and scratch them.
Squeeze every sweet or acidic droplet from them...
especially from the perspective of what they can teach you for the better.
They'll make you a better and more benevolent God when it comes to you as a creative.