You Need More than One Bucket to Fill a Well

'Where I get inspiration', 'filling the well' and all the other euphemisms we use to encompass what really amounts to self-care is a tricky devil. I mean, do you ever have discontent rolling from your gut to heart and back again, but the wine and the bath bombs that did the trick yesterday don't put a dent in it today? Or is it just me pacing my house like a caged lion?

I'm guessing that answer is no. Especially not now. We're all looking for ways to self-soothe. It's a skill we're supposed to pick up in the transition from child to adulthood, but rarely do in healthy ways. This culture isn't big on it. It doesn't help that what makes us feel empty and depleted is often an incredibly fast-moving target.

What to do, then?

Multiple weapons, my friend. Multiple weapons. Some days, all you need to restore your soul is an exquisite piece of chocolate. Or a meal made by someone who cares about you. A piece of poetry or art that steals your breath. A drive (where you don't get out of the car) just to see what's over that hill or around that bend over there. Music. Movement - never underestimate the power of dancing like a goober to music you love when no one else is home. Go for a walk - just wear your mask. Learn something new. It doesn't have to be weighty or even germane. I've watched a dog training show on Youtube, for heaven's sake. I don't have dogs. Can't have dogs, more's the pity, and so the chance that I would EVAR use this is . . . well hell . . . now it's going in a story. Right now, a thunderstorm is doing the job for me. Sitting outside, under good cover, never fear, exposed to negative ions and listening to the rain and not-so-distant rumble.

Also, I think it's important to say that it's okay to be spent. It's okay to be empty. There's power in that, too. It's a rich, fallow space to lie in while you take a breath without rushing to fill back up again. Nature abhors a vacuum. You will fill. It's legit to take a break before you rush to do and just be.

PS: New book out! The Blood Knife released yesterday as a part of a box set called Beyond Twilight that's available for the next three weeks. We have eleven vampire books in the collection. A portion of proceeds supports the Southern Ohio Wolf Sanctuary. The stories are based on how vampires might have changed in the years since Twilight first came out. Politics have changed. Social justice has changed. Vamps have had to adapt. We wrote a few of those stories. While we may be writing Team Edward, we're supporting Team Jacob.

Check us out.

Finding Inspiration

pic from my hiking adventures

If you’re a writer, you’ve undoubtedly been asked where do you get your ideas from? About a thousand times. And the topic of the week might give you an easy way to answer: what other media inspires you? 

I write sci-fi and fantasy. And for me, it’s almost a right brain left brain kind of thing. So it makes sense that I’m inspired to write the different genres in different ways.

When I’m writing the future and coming up with all sorts of made-up tech I thrive off other science fiction media. Anyone watch Altered Carbon? Fan-freaking-tastic! The character journeys were fun to watch unfold, but it was the world and all those small details—how the characters interacted with and used that world that fired off hundreds of ideas. 

When I’m writing fantasy I need nature. When I’m dreaming up completely new worlds and magic I need to walk under the trees and step to the cliff’s edge. If I really can’t get out, or my imagination needs to travel to the type of local I’ve never been to, photography saves me. Beautiful images, vivid or faded, breath taking scenery.

#Ullrthehuskypup

Yes, I know the act of writing stems from the same brain location, but activating the scientific part of me is a completely different function than painting worlds with words. 

I should really remember this for when I’m feeling stuck in my writing. I sort of do consciously think this way, I frequently take the husky pup (I still miss my Loki dog) for walks to get the mind going, and I’ll binge on sci-fi movies/shows for ideas. 

But if I actively try to kickstart the part of my brain I need…sooner, maybe my sticky spots will be shorter lived! 

How about you? I envy the people that get inspired by music. So, do you use a certain type of media to inspire you? 

Let the Music Shake Your Creative Soul

What other media refills my creative well? Books, movies/TV, music, illustrations/art, international news...really, not much doesn't. Inspiration is everywhere you want to see it.

If I'm stuck, though, or I can't crawl into the right mental place to make progress...or I'm just full of the I can't whines and snivels? It's music for the quick fix. Great songwriters will compress an amazing story into ~3 minutes. Better ones will set that story against music that pulls, shoves, and trips you. My go-to genre is the multi-headed beast known as Rock and it's many subgenres. Bombasts to ballads, load up my playlist with blues, punk, alt, goth, glam, or whatever some marketing dept wants to call it.  I want drums, bass, and guitar working together to make me feel and a vocalist who cracks open a door to world of possibilities. 

Give me a song that shakes the windows and my soul, and I'll give you a fantastical story.

Feeding the Creative Subconscious with Beauty

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is inspiration. What other media inspires us: fandom, music, photography, paintings?

For me, the answer is pretty much yes.

Yes to all of it. Books, poetry, news articles, music, visual arts of all kinds - it all feeds into a stewpot of inspiration for me. For today's post, however, I'll stick with visual arts, particularly paintings and drawings.

The above is a giclee by Diana Stetson called Raven Watching. My mom bought it for me a couple of weeks ago from a gallery in Santa Fe. It's an early birthday present, since the odds of us being together for my actual birthday aren't great. I love the sense of depth to this piece, and how the raven seems to be watching with a keen and knowing gaze. It looks exactly like the desert ravens around our house, too, so that's a lovely echo to bring indoors.

It's fitting, too, that my mom bought this gift for me, as she's the one who taught me to love art--largely by dragging me in and out of Santa Fe galleries on family vacations.

When I first began transitioning from being a scientist to a writer, I studied a great deal about being creative, especially the creative subconscious. One thing I gleaned was to surround myself with visual images that fed my subconscious. I read a quote from Anna Pavlova - which I inevitably can't find now - about the Imperial Ballet Academy where she studied. She said everywhere at the academy, they were surrounded by beauty - so that they would soak that in and bring it out again in their dance.

I took that to heart and surround myself with art that makes me feel reverence for the world. Sometimes I can point to specific inspirations. Other times... well, I hope that it's soaked in, ready to spring forth in new forms.

Notes for Stories Collect Dust While I Write Other Books

DepositPhoto

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about Ideas. How do you write down or remember those great ideas that you get mid-shower/dream/car drive? If you lose them, how do you get them back?

As an author, I have wisps of ideas and plots running around in my mind all the time (I’m good at multitasking!). Sometimes I’ll read an article that inspires a plot idea or occasionally one will come to me out of the blue. I usually write myself a one sentence note with the gist of the idea and then I have a folder stuffed full of these. The thing is, I almost never refer back to them.

I’m always working on a book and I’m always thinking about the next two books to come, even if they aren’t in the same series or even the same universe. I keep a constantly simmering ‘pot of stew’ going in my head with ideas for these books and will rarely allow myself to get distracted by anything newer or shinier. These three books – the one I’m writing, the next one I’ll write and then the most likely one after that – ARE the shiny for me. So for example, right now I’m writing a Star Cruise story set on my interstellar space liner, which is for the Pets in Space® 5 anthology, due out in the Fall. The next book will most likely be either JAMOKAN or TRATUS, which are both in my Badari Warriors science fiction romance series. I’m debating between the two of them as to what’s up first. The third book in my mind’s queue at the moment is either one set in my fantasy world of Claddare, or maybe an Egyptian…or one of these could be my fourth in line, if I write Jamokan and then Tratus.

BUT, this week I’ve become enamored of one of my older ideas and am severely tempted to write it after Jamokan. I have to go where the Muse has the energy to be in order to write my best books and to have the creative flow. I’ve learned my own process pretty well over the years! This particular plot is one I’ve been mulling for years, off and on, but it never bubbled up to the top of the list for whatever reason. The same thing happened with COLONY UNDER SIEGE: INTERSTELLAR PLAGUE, which I released in June. I’d had it in mind to do forever but then the pandemic made it the only thing I was in the mood to write and so I did.

This portion of the writing year is a bit under constraint because I can’t release a scifi romance in the same time as Pets In Space (we don’t compete with ourselves), but I do have to keep paying the rent and the bills, so I need to keep my releases coming on a more or less regular schedule. So, the fantasy or the Egyptian might come next after JAMOKAN  purely due to scheduling concerns. Luckily I love writing in both worlds but my fan base is smaller than for the SFR.

If a random idea really strikes a chord with me, I won’t forget it. I may take years to actually use it in a book, but it’ll always be there, in the Muse’s list of ingredients.

My first "woke up in the morning,
gotta write it" title and my first really BIG
 seller!

On really rare occasions I might wake up in the morning with an entire book in my head (well, as completely as I ever plot in advance – the beginning, the ending, the hero and heroine and a few major scenes) and I know I have to set aside everything else and just write this book. Those plots are a gift not to be squandered and they kind of write themselves. This is where it’s helpful to be independently published as I don’t owe anyone anything under a contract with a hard date. Pets in Space is an exception.

The other thing I have to be careful of is not thinking through an idea too much before writing it. I used to have a two hour commute that could become three hours or more on the Southern California freeways. I also used to get anxiety attacks after a really bad 1982 accident (long story, on a freeway offramp, locked the brakes, rolled the car three times, ended upside down after knocking over a tree, broke three ribs..). One day I was stuck in traffic, on the way to work, anxiety giving me hell…so I told myself a story. You can safely do that if your car isn’t moving or only inching forward in occasional bursts. It was a scifi ghost story, set in space on an abandoned colony. I seriously gave myself goose bumps because it was so darn scary. And then the traffic eventually opened up, I got to work and was late for meetings that day, etc., so I never wrote any of it down. It was one of those shining magic stories that I should have dropped everything to actually write but at the old day job that certainly wasn’t a possibility. Bosses paying you to work don’t exactly resonate with you shutting your door and writing a novel on their time.

Will I ever write it? I haven’t forgotten the essentials and at one point I did write maybe the first 1000 words but the magic of it was gone. The Muse felt we’d been there and done that and weren’t going back. If I think about a story too much, I can’t write it, and on that commute from hell, I’d let myself develop the entire story, like a movie, down to the details so I wouldn’t have a major anxiety attack and pass out in the (allegedly) fast lane. Soooo, I kinda doubt it but never say never. If I got a new wrinkle or twist to add, then maybe. But for now the few notes and words there are on it reside in that bulging, never opened “Note for Stories” folder in the old beige file cabinet.

Idea Recall

Just a flower about to burst into bloom on the lanai. I was told it was a form of orchid. To be sure, it's an epiphyte, but I'm not so sure about the orchid thing. It's a Medinilla magnifica.

I'm using this photo here because I want to make the point that ideas are as numerous as the clusters of flowers on this plant. You either enjoy them when they bloom or you lose them when they drop, which happens frequently. Like so many tropical and subtropical plants, the flowers don't all come out at once. They emerge in waves and they drop in waves. No sooner have you swept up one mess of rose grapes, which these are also called, and another set are falling.

There's my idea metaphor.

Gather ye the buds of ideas while ye may. Cause sure as you sleep on 'em, they'll be gone like ghosts in the rising sun. Waking life ideas are easy. Say you're in the shower. You get an idea followed by another and another. Those ideas are related or they wouldn't have triggered one another. NUMBER THEM in your head. Assign each a single key word. REPEAT THEM. Then finish your shower asap, GTFO, and find paper. Or whatever recording device you need. Your phone has a recorder on it. Record the idea. There's a notes app. Use that if you have to. I prefer either paper or just getting an idea to a computer. The whole strategy for me is to find just that one single key word that opens out the entire idea when I repeat it.

But. As I said. The One Thing Guaranteed to Fail: lying to yourself about remembering that idea that comes to you in twilight sleep - in that moment between waking and dropping into slumber. You don't want to rouse yourself. So you number the ideas. You key word them. You repeat them. And when your alarm goes off, all you'll remember is that you had ideas and now, they're gone. The only solution here is a pad of paper beside the bed and a book light. I used to use sharpie and write on my palm when I got ideas in the middle of the night. That gets really, really hard to read when you write over something you've already written, so seriously, don't do that. A little note book and an unobtrusive light source will make  you much happier and you won't hate yourself in the morning.

How to not lose your ideas!

You walk into the room, flip on the light switch, and stare…wondering why you came in here to begin with. Memory can be tricky. And if you’re a writer you’ve undoubtedly lost ideas. So, ‘How do you write down or remember those great ideas that you get mid-shower/dream/car ride?’?

My chronic disease sometimes pals along with brain fog. If you don’t know what that is, consider yourself blessed. If you read my description below and it resonates with you, my heart goes out to you, let me know if you need an electronic hug.

Brain Fog: symptoms of mental fatigue. Sometimes involving memory, mental clarity, mental fatigue, loss of concentration, not feeling like yourself…similar to mentally wading through thick fog. 

So the question remains, how do I remember those lightening-bolt book ideas when they strike? Maybe it really depends on what kind of lightening you get.  

Book concept ideas. The big ones that undoubtedly have rolling thunder follow. When these hit I prefer to ruminate on them for a while. I read a post by John Scalzi, likely the same one Jeffe referred to on Sunday, in which he talked about his story selection process and if his idea still sounds good after a year he figures that it’s worth writing. Trust me, the good ones stick around.

Writing ideas. Cloud to cloud lightening. Plot fixes, characters, world building, magic, transitions…etc. It never fails, these kinds of ideas hit at the least convenient of times. In the shower, driving, cooking, weeding the garden. Basically anytime I’m far away from my computer and can’t immediately start writing out the genius idea. And too many times I’ve been struck, but couldn’t get to my computer or find some paper to write down the perfect fix…and then forgotten it. 

I’m pretty terrible at recalling those perfect fixes, sucky brain fog. But I do have a secret weapon. He’s been with me longer than I’ve been without him, we’ve grown up together, he’s always got my back, he’s more important to me today than he was in the beginning, and today we’ve officially been married for 15 years! (I wish we were back in Ten Sleep WY) Technically we’ve been together for 21 years and it’s safe to say he knows how my brain works and how it’s going to work. Which is why he bought me…this is where I divulge my insider tip: 

I have mini notebooks, everywhere. Along with a pen. 

My handsome man bought me a handful of mini moleskine notebooks for my birthday a few years back and I keep one in each of our vehicles, always one or two in my purse, one in my nightstand and one in the kitchen. Always within reach and always on hand. 

I couldn’t keep track of my writing ideas with out my notebooks and I couldn’t make it through life without him. So, thanks for the moleskines, Jon, and thanks for these past amazing years. I’m looking forward to the next 15, happy anniversary.

Flight of the elusive story idea

You know how butterflies can't seem to fly in a straight line and never go where you expect them to go? It's really hard to capture them, even with a huge net. I don't even try. I just watch them fly and appreciate their beauty and attempt to imprint it on my memory.

Butterflies are like story ideas.

They wander into view unexpectedly, a flash of distracting gorgeousness exactly when I don't expect them and, frankly, don't have time for them. (Usually when I'm driving, exercising, or doing dishes.) The best I can do is attempt to see every part of them, run them through the challenge course of my brain, and attempt to imprint their essence there so I can retrieve them later, when I have the time.

Okay, yes, I have tried fishtailing onto a side street, skidding to a stop, grabbing my handy-dandy notebook, and furiously writing the thing down. Usually it's a dialogue snippet of such startling brilliance I find myself amazed... until I read it back later and am like, what? I almost got myself rear-ended for this crud?

Same thing with dreams: I'll wake up, certain I've got a complete and glorious story or scene ready-made from dreamland, and I'll scribble it down in a rush, only to find out later that it wasn't so great and actually was probably just a dream-mangled episode of Doctor Who or quest from Dragon Age.

Mostly I find that these brilliant butterfly ideas are only beautiful in the moment. If I write them exactly as they are, it's like capturing a critter in a net, and folks, that's not where a butterfly is supposed to be. A butterfly, like an idea, is only actually beautiful if it's wild.

So I started making myself step back and letting my ideas fly, and turns out they don't always fly away. Sometimes the linger, thread themselves in and out of whatever other task I'm doing, and then later, when I sit down to write, I find that all that aimless flitting has evolved into a discernible pattern and has sort of magically fitted itself into my work-in-progress. I guess, my brain being what it is, it's not the act of recognizing an idea that's useful: it's allowing that idea to process.

So maybe the idea is more caterpillar than butterfly, honestly. It's better if it has time to develop.