IWSG: Ideas and Writing

We're officially halfway through the year! I hope you're having a good one and that you've made progress toward your goals. Since it's the first Wednesday of the month, it's time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the IWSG on their website and Facebook page.

Our hosts this week are PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, Gwen Gardner, Pat Garcia, and Natalie Aguirre.

Here's our question for this month: Ninety-nine percent of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from?

I think we've had similar questions about story inspiration for the IWSG before. When you're starting your writing journey, coming up with ideas may seem overwhelming and intimidating. As my Taoism reading for today says, "Facing blank paper is an artist's terror." Even if you're in the middle of writing, lack of ideas can lead to writer's block.

If you are having trouble finding inspiration, you might want to consider submitting to themed short story anthologies or magazine in your genre (if that is common in your genre, that is.) Working with a theme (like a holiday, setting, or story element), might help you focus your creativity. 

Questions about where authors get their ideas seem to focus on the initial starting idea, the kernel that the story grows around. I have found that I develop my best stories by combining ideas. For example, my first published short story, "A Reptile at the Reunion," was inspired by a theme from a short story magazine and an invitation I received for a college reunion. This combination gave me a premise of someone thought to be dead (the magazine theme) showing up unexpectedly at their reunion. One idea isn't enough for a story; you have to keep adding to it. I kept asking myself questions to develop the character and her story. The premise changed extensively between my first and final draft, and the story wound up being published in a different anthology that sparked the story in the first place.

As you get more experience with writing and develop your own stories, you may find your worlds and characters keep generating ideas for you. I could probably spend the rest of my writing career continuing the series I've already written, but I seek out other projects as well to challenge me. (Or sometimes to give myself time away from my current project.) There is no limit to the ideas and combinations of ideas you can write about. The important thing is to take the idea that interests you and add on to it.

If you've been writing for a while, do you find it easier to come up with ideas? Where do yours come from? Feel free to share in the comments.

IWSG: Reading and Writing

Another month, another post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. If you're not already a member, learn more about them on their website and Facebook page. They're also on Instagram and Twitter.

Our hosts this month are Ronel Janes Vuuren, Mary Aalgaard, Madeline Mora-Summonte, and Ellen@The Cynical Sailor.

Here's our question for the month: It's been said that the benefits of becoming a writer who does not read is that all your ideas are new and original. Everything you do is an extension of yourself, instead of a mixture of you and another author. On the other hand, how can you expect other people to want your writing if you don't enjoy reading? What are your thoughts?

 As an avid reader, I can't imagine giving it up as long as I'm able to do it. I disagree with the premise that avoiding reading will give you original ideas and an original voice. Ideas are everywhere, not just in books, but in movies, comics, games, TV shows, songs, and even everyday incidents. You can't avoid exposure to other people's ideas. To create original stories, I often obtain inspiration from many sources and combine them. For example, my first published short story, "A Reptile at the Reunion," which can be found in Firestorm of Dragons, was inspired by a question prompt for a different anthology (The question was something like, "Say, aren't you dead?") and a letter inviting me to my grad school reunion. Along the way, the dead part evolved into a reason why someone might avoid going to their college reunion. (In this story, a magician who'd lost her magic was reluctant to return to a University of Magic.) I think if you try too hard to create an original idea, it might not resonate with readers. I do agree that your favorite authors can influence your writing style, but I think the best way to avoid copying one author is to read widely, not quit reading.

How important do you think it is for a writer to be a reader? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Ghosts of Projects Yet (or If) to Come

Pat's comment on Monday about keeping an idea list made me think about all the projects I'd like to work on "someday." There's a lot. I've already mentioned how I want to write another series set in the same world as the Season Avatars series. I'd also like to write more stories in the Catalyst Chronicles series. Indeed, it seems like many short stories beget novels, which beget series, which soon become multigenerational family sagas.

I could probably spend the rest of my writing career just expanding on the worlds I've already created. However, there are still plenty of other ideas and genres I'd like to explore. They include superhero stories, alternate history, and solarpunk, to name a few. I don't want to say too much about these ideas now in case they change later.

So, what's stopping me from working on all of these ideas? One of the biggest obstacles is lack of time. I have a lot of daily responsibilities to manage, and what little writing time I have tends to go toward works in process instead of new ideas. The other major problem is that many of these ideas are just that: ideas. They might give me a backdrop, but I still need to develop characters and a plot to turn these ideas into stories. To do that, I need time for research and rumination, and that can be hard to find.

Ultimately, I don't know how many of these ideas will ever make it out of my head and onto the page. They'll have to be managed around with the rest of my other projects. I may never get to any or all of them, but they'll inspire me to keep writing as long as I'm physically and mentally capable of it.

Dueling Divisions

My family and I ran into a bit of a snafu this week when we realized I did not have a current vehicle sticker on my car, even though I'd paid for one. When I went in to the DMV to investigate, it turned out that they had tried to send it to me, but it had apparently been marked as undeliverable and had been returned. Considering I've been at my current address for several years and have had no prior issues receiving mailings from the DMV, I have no idea what went wrong. (Well, I have some ideas, but that's getting into politics.) The issue could be with the DMV, but I think it could be the mail service.

It occurred to me that at least this incident might generate story ideas. What's the one public service you would want to keep running in a crisis? Which two public services are most likely to clash with each other? Which ones would be the funniest? Please leave your ideas in the comments.

Back on the Blog Chain: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

I'm part of a blog chain with a group of other writers in various genres. (You can find links to the other members in the sidebar.) About twice a month, we discuss different writing topics. This time, Shaun, whose novel The Deathday Letter was just published this week, asked us this question:

From where do you get your inspiration for stories?  Give me the oddest, coolest, things that have inspired you.

Kate preceded me in the chain, and Eric comes after me.

I actually discussed this topic on my website ages ago, but I don't think it's enough for the blog chain to just provide a link. Besides, ideas are everywhere. I get them from my daily experiences, from people I meet online, from science articles, and from other books. This is good, as I feel one idea isn't always enough to create a story; you need two ideas to create a story with a unique angle. As an example, my short story "A Reptile at the Reunion" was inspired by an invitation to my graduate school reunion and a magazine's challenge to write a story around the line, "Say, aren't you dead?" (In the first draft of the story, my main character was presumed dead by her classmates, but in the final version, she's just been on another planet for a long time.)

I've also received inspiration from the Beatles, my favorite musical group. Their four-fold synergy inspired me to create a quartet of female magicians who must work together to save their country from a storm that mixes up the seasons. I also used to write Beatles fan fiction, and after reading a story about the Beatles in the Cavern (a club in Liverpool where they played before they became famous), I wanted to use the same setting too. As a science fiction writer, I wanted to give the story a SF twist, so I sent a descendant of John's back in time to clone him. That story, "Move Over Ms. L.," earned me an Honorable Mention in an international novella competition, but it also inspired me to then write a story about the clone. After many rewrites and removal of most of the Beatle references, I wound up with my current WIP, Across Two Universes.

That leads me to my final point: once I come up with characters and a story, I find that they inspire me to write more stories about them. What I think will be a short story may be the start of a saga. And while that may not be the oddest inspiration I've received so far, I still think it's pretty cool.

Blog Chain: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

As I mentioned in my last post, I've joined a blog chain created by members of QueryTracker, a site devoted to helping writers keep tabs on their submissions to agents. (I'm a member too, but since Across Two Universes isn't ready for submission yet, I haven't used the tracking feature.) The current topic is, "Where do you get your ideas from?" You can follow the chain by going here and here. I've also linked to all of the chain members' blogs in the sidebar, so go ahead and check them out.


It's interesting that this is my first topic in the blog chain, since I wrote an essay about ideas for my website back in 2002. You can still read it here, if you'd like. In that essay, I talk about how the Beatles, particularly John Lennon, inspired the novels I was working on then. One of those novels got sent around to various agents (and to Tor) before being trunked; another has gone extensive revision and is currently titled Across Two Universes. Of course, I wrote that essay six years ago, and I've had other projects come into my life since then. I'll summarize briefly what inspired them.


Much of my inspiration comes from my daily life. My short story "A Reptile at the Reunion" came about from the combination of an invitation to my grad school reunion (which I skipped) and a writing challenge in a magazine. Other short stories (which I've started but not finished) came from a bout of insomina I had this winter or non-buyer's remorse I felt after passing on a beautiful silk blazer on sale up in Madison. These incidents made me think of ways to lure the "sheep of sleep" (the ones you're supposed to count) back into a person's life or what it would be like to discover a chest full of the things you once wanted but didn't get. Interests such as dealing with the conflict between evolution and science inspired me to create an alien race that has a unique way to handle this conflict--except that for one individual, it doesn't work. Yet another short story I need to finish.


Other times I get ideas from reading. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when I find too much of the same type of story on the bookshelves of my local B&N. There are stories that I think need to be told, even if they don't use "conventional" (i.e., commerically popular) types of heroines or themes. For instance, other than Julie Kenner's Demon series, I don't see too many mothers featured in stories. You could say my NaNoWriMo project from last year, about a working mother who gains the ability to turn into an owl, was inspired partly by a desire to find more stories with heroines I could relate to. Part of this idea also came from everyday life. I often see red-tailed hawks as I drive around, so I wondered what it would be like for one of them to be a human in disguise. I thought at first of a stay-at-home mother, but since the character I came up with is divorced, she has to work to support herself and her daughter. I also changed the bird to an owl so she could go around at night (and interact with werewolves), but I have plans to bring a hawk-person into that story as I re-think the plot.


I mentioned before that one of my short stories was inspired by a writing challenge in a magazine. After Firestorm of Dragons was published, I recieved an invitation from the editor to submit something for another themed anthology. (I don't know what the status of this project is, so I don't feel comfortable sharing the topic here.) This might be one of the hardest things for an author, to find an idea about a topic someone else picked. I did some research and thought about what kind of characters could bring a fresh perspective to this topic. Ultimately I did come up with an unusual take on a stock character, which then helped me determine the rest of the plot for the story. Unfortunately, I didn't finish the story before the deadline, but I may go back to it at some point.


I'll finish this post by repeating a point I made back in 2002; an idea alone isn't enough to make a story. Sometimes you need to combine several ideas before you can create the characters and plot necessary to make an idea come to life; other times, you need to interrogate the idea to generate the characters and plot. But when you learn authors such as Mercedes Lackey can write stories about paper bags (see "Roadkill"), you realize there are more ideas out there than you can ever write about.

OK, I think this finishes the blog chain for this topic. Tune in soon when I go Back on the Chain Gang!