What to Write?

It is all well and good to take part in writing programs and workshops and receive advice on the process and how to best motivate yourself, but at the end of the day what really matters is just getting a half-decent idea. One of the trickiest parts of writing that really never becomes easy at any stage is not just getting inspired, but getting inspired by an idea that will actually allow for an interesting and unique story, that will be just as engaging to read as it was to write. Writing, at its core, is very simple. There are essentially two sides to it: style and content, or story. Many people would weigh as being of uneven importance, with style taking a backseat to the actual narrative arc, but being the huge nerd for stylized prose that I am I like the consider the two equal. Style tends to be a bit more easily shaped and improved through things like classes and workshops and mentorships, and can be practiced and mastered through vigorous yet simple writing exercises. In short, style is perhaps a bit more tangibly improved and easily learned by writers, and I hope to cover it next week. Mastering the content side, the true storytelling, is a far more complex feat. It practically impossible to really teach the methods to reach true inspiration, to fully tap into the creative muse and pull something out worth reading, and it is ultimately on the writer to find their own personal method of coming across good ideas. There are practically infinite approaches to this most mystical aspect of the writing process, the preliminary brainstorming stage. This is a time when style is completely absent and a writer solely seeks to construct some sort of framework for their future creation. Having read and listened to a lot of authors discussing how they get their ideas, and knowing my own method, I think that it is quite fair to say that the best story ideas are going to require an immense amount of trial and error, reworking and rethinking. Nothing is going to start out great or even necessarily good, and any serious writer needs to know that they should be ready for a real commitment if they want to write something truly special. Also, it is worth noting that every idea that starts out sounding interesting is not necessarily going to make a good story. This is a lesson that eventually will be learned by any writer who has done enough work to find that some of it simply cannot ever hope to be better than okay. The final lesson that I would care to share regarding inspiration is that everybody loves to offer their two cents about keeping journals/diaries or locking themselves away to brainstorm or doing brain dumps or only writing in the morning or at night but ultimately that is all just subjective and not generally applicable. It is the job of the writer to really pick a system that works to find ideas. In my case, I often will just set aside "brainstorming time", then pace around and jot stuff down until I come across something good enough to start off with. Sometimes the thing is good, sometimes bad, but either way it is practice and tends to work out well more often than not. So really, nobody is going to be able to tell you "how to get a winning idea". All creative minds work differently, and it is up to you to understand yours.