The Write Tuition

Fill your bucket. (Inspiration on tap.)

Inspiration is a wonderful thing. When an idea suddenly grabs you by the throat and won’t let go until you’ve finished writing the tale you’ll feel like a ‘proper’ writer. When it happens bask in the moment because it doesn’t happen every day.

A working writer has no time to wait for inspiration to strike. Sitting around gazing at a blank screen or page is a luxury we can’t afford.

So here’s a few hints on how to make sure your ‘idea bucket’ is already full of ideas when you sit down to write.

1) Study yourself and find out what things inspire you naturally. If music puts you in the mood to write, narrow it down a little more and work out what kind of music. If you’re a part-time writer play a tape or CD of the appropriate music on the way home from your regular job, so you’ll be in writing mode by the time you get there.

2) Maybe photographs press your buttons. Many writers can dream up a whole story based around a few photos of strangers, or illustrations from a magazine. Maybe empty landscapes inspire you to populate them with imaginary folks. Take your notebook - paper or electronic - to an art gallery and just roam around for a while and see if any of the pictures ’speak’ to you. Don’t worry if the images in your head have little do with the ones on the canvas, on this trip the ‘Old Masters’ are just brain fodder.

3) Always watch people. In crowded cafés, bus stations, any place where people gather and have a fairly rapid turnover. ‘People watching’ is dynamic, ever changing. Speculate like crazy over the lives of strangers. Give them names, jobs, relationships.

4) Eavesdrop - but carefully so you don’t get punched by anyone who feels your attention is intrusive. It’s not that difficult to hold a conversation with a friend whilst listening in to another a few tables away. A good friend will notice when you ‘have your writer’s face on’ and prop up the conversation for you. Spouses and partners can sometimes be a little less understanding, so try to damp down your mental note-taking when out on a wedding anniversary dinner date.

5) Read. Some writers will tell you they have no time to read. Make time to read, or, at the very least, listen to audio books on your trip to and from work. Don’t just stick to your own chosen genre. Read almost everything you can lay your hands on, especially factual works. The cross fertilisation of ideas which will occur when you know a little bit about many things is amazing. For a writer not to read is like a sex worker not having a body. You don’t see many ghostly apparitions earning a living on street corners, do you?

The purpose of all the above is to fill your head with images, phrases, and situations which you can use to fuel your own imagination. It is probably impossible to write a completely fictitious novel, entirely from your imagination. Even if you invent a race of three-legged people who walk on their hands, listen with one foot, and communicate by banging the other two together in a series of staccato slaps most of their relationships will probably still be based on things you have seen and observed in more conventional human or animal behaviour.

So get out there, observe, note, and fill your idea bucket. Your subconscious mind will mix and match the raw ingredients - sometimes with amazing results, sometimes a bit more predictably - but you have to gather those ingredients first.

Get gathering.

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