Monday
Aug302010
Fall Must Be Coming
Monday, August 30, 2010 at 12:49AM
Reasons I know fall is coming:
1. I am buying an unusual volume of soft and fuzzy things. New slippers, new sweater, oogling a new pair of Uggs.
2. MY HEAD IS EXPLODING! So much so that i can't really sleep for all the stories exploding in my head. One, which has been percolating since maybe April, just clicked into place with like a cosmic boom.
Which is actually terrible timing, because I'm finishing a book now, trying to write an outline for a sequel, waiting for some edits to come back on Scarlet, and now i have this crazy burning idea.
Oh, yeah, and I'm also working on organizing an essay contest that i will blog about in detail later, because, well, i need me some help on that!
This always happens to me. I have no idea why, but fall comes around and it's like my heart rate speeds up. And my creative rate speeds up. And I barely sleep for months and I churn out like 80,000 words a month, and then we get to about February and it all dies.
But then again, in this blitz last year i wrote Scarlet, so obviously good things come out of it.
But it also raises another question for me: this "click" that I had was inspired by listening to another person's story. I had this character that was 99% formed and then if I take one single element from this real life person's life (and possibly some little incidents that would color in backstory) and combine it with my existing character, i have a REALLY AWESOME CHARACTER. But this is troubling to me because despite the fact that in retrospect, i can see how certain characters were inspired by certain traits in people, i've never had such direct inspiration, and it feels a little like life plagiarism.
Is this wrong? Do i run it by the person? If i do, what the hell do i say? "Hey, you, that story you were telling me REALLY inspired me. Can I use that, but change the "you" in the story into a kind of dark character?" Would they possibly understand that I'm not writing about THEM, but about an amalgamation of them that's really just a sliver of them?
I think that's a hard--and confusing--sell. Anyone have any experience in this, because I'm probably going to blurt it out and it will come out very wrong.
And also--is it understood by people that meet writers that the old proviso is true: Be careful or you'll end up in my novel?
1. I am buying an unusual volume of soft and fuzzy things. New slippers, new sweater, oogling a new pair of Uggs.
2. MY HEAD IS EXPLODING! So much so that i can't really sleep for all the stories exploding in my head. One, which has been percolating since maybe April, just clicked into place with like a cosmic boom.
Which is actually terrible timing, because I'm finishing a book now, trying to write an outline for a sequel, waiting for some edits to come back on Scarlet, and now i have this crazy burning idea.
Oh, yeah, and I'm also working on organizing an essay contest that i will blog about in detail later, because, well, i need me some help on that!
This always happens to me. I have no idea why, but fall comes around and it's like my heart rate speeds up. And my creative rate speeds up. And I barely sleep for months and I churn out like 80,000 words a month, and then we get to about February and it all dies.
But then again, in this blitz last year i wrote Scarlet, so obviously good things come out of it.
But it also raises another question for me: this "click" that I had was inspired by listening to another person's story. I had this character that was 99% formed and then if I take one single element from this real life person's life (and possibly some little incidents that would color in backstory) and combine it with my existing character, i have a REALLY AWESOME CHARACTER. But this is troubling to me because despite the fact that in retrospect, i can see how certain characters were inspired by certain traits in people, i've never had such direct inspiration, and it feels a little like life plagiarism.
Is this wrong? Do i run it by the person? If i do, what the hell do i say? "Hey, you, that story you were telling me REALLY inspired me. Can I use that, but change the "you" in the story into a kind of dark character?" Would they possibly understand that I'm not writing about THEM, but about an amalgamation of them that's really just a sliver of them?
I think that's a hard--and confusing--sell. Anyone have any experience in this, because I'm probably going to blurt it out and it will come out very wrong.
And also--is it understood by people that meet writers that the old proviso is true: Be careful or you'll end up in my novel?
tagged Writing, characters, fall, people, real life inspiration in Life, Novels, Writing
Writing, characters, fall, people, real life inspiration in Life, Novels, Writing
Reader Comments (1)
It's like you have inverse seasonal affective disorder.