Hey everyone! Here we are! We finally made it to our new series titled Inspiration. I made a lot of plans during my two-week break as well as during this last three stand-alone posts to make sure that these posts are helpful and informative.
Writers everywhere are always lamenting not being inspired enough to write a book. Writers are constantly waiting for inspiration to hit them and I am no exception to that rule. So, I made this series to help all writers who are searching for inspiration. The first thing that should be noted before I start this series is that writers need to stop waiting for inspiration to hit them and start going looking for inspiration in everyday life.
The purpose of this series is to write posts about the things that can help a writer find inspiration and begin finding new ideas to write new and fun books and interesting books. So, without further ado….
Inspiration: Gain Experience
My first piece of advice for every writer who is trying to find inspiration is to first gain experience. I think there are two kinds of experiences that every writer should gather so that they can make better books. The first kind of experience is life experience and the other is writing experience. I would like to break this post down into these two sections and write each section separately.
Life Experience
The first kind of experience every writer should gain that will help them with inspiration is life experience. Now the first reaction I always get when I mention getting life experience to writers who are usually introverts who like to spend time writing or reading or doing other activities where they stay home and do things relatively on their own, is that life experience is scary. I will tell you a secret that I had to learn.
Life experience is scary.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good for you.
One of my friends, while I was off living in England being scared and having fun and gaining life experiences once told me “There is no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone” (I’m sure this is a quote from someone, but I don’t know who she was quoting). I think this quote is very accurate to sum up what life experience is all about. I took this advice and made my own new little bit of advice that I usually tell other introverts who are scared of having life experiences, leaving the comfort zone, and trying new things. I tell them,
Foresight is considering hindsight.
This means that when you want to worry about the things in the future that you don’t know about yet you should think of all the new things that you might gain from all those scary future things you are planning on doing. Every experience you are going to have in the future will one day be in the past for you to look back on and consider and write about. I’m not saying don’t worry. You can worry. Just remember that it isn’t always going to be the future scary thing you are worried about.
Now that I have the advice out of the way let me explain how life experience can give you inspiration as a writer. Now this seems fairly obvious but I’m going to say it anyway. Life experience gives you more interesting things to write about. The more you know about life the more information and situations you have to draw upon to write more interesting and life like scenes or storylines. Never forget that you can always write something better when you have firsthand experience doing or feeling the thing that you are writing about. I used to think I did a pretty good job writing about pain or heartbreak, but it wasn’t until I experienced those two things that I had a better idea of how to write those things in a book.
Gaining life experience is important for developing as a person and also developing as a writer.
Writing Experience
Writing experience is any experience you can gain as a writer about writing whether its personal experience or learned knowledge. The simplest and easiest way to gain writing experience is by reading books about writing. There are hundreds of books out there written by writers that are about the process of writing. There are books that are about writing in general. There are books about specific structures of writing. You can find books on just about anything related to writing that you would like.
You can also read writers blogs to gain even more knowledge about writing and even about other writers. Since you are reading this blog I would say that you are already on the right track to gaining writing experience to get inspired.
Another way that you can gain writer experience is through personal experience. Attend writing conferences to learn more about the writing craft. Enter writing competitions that send feedback on your pieces so that you can improve your writing in that way. Join writing groups to receive writing feedback on the pieces you submit every meeting. Writing experience can come in many forms but as long as you are learning new things about writing then you are gaining writing experiences.
Writing experiences can help to inspire you buy giving you fun and unique ways to write. Some of my best pieces of writing were inspired by a mix of personal life experiences a new writing style that I read about and wanted to try. I wrote a short story once loosely based off of something I saw on my University campus using a new writing style I had been reading about where you write a short story while listening to a single instrumental song over and over and then edit it until the story, while being read out loud, fits into the duration of the song. The song becomes your piece of writing and your piece of writing becomes the song.
I was inspired by both things to write that short story. And by writing that short story I gained more writing experience which later influenced another story that I wrote. Gaining experience to inspire yourself to write is not a one-time thing. Gaining experience to be inspired happens all the time, with every day. You just need to consciously recognize that it is happening. When combining both of these types of experiences or even on their own, you can be inspired as a writer.
I hope that this week’s post was helpful, and I had a lot of fun writing it. I am so excited for next weeks inspiration post which is titled Read Widely. As always if you have any comments, thoughts, or opinions don’t be afraid to send them my way. I will consider and most often reply to responses to posts! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog member, share, or follow me on social media at the social links at the bottom of this page. Have a great week and remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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