I could have sworn I had written more blog posts this week than I appear to have done. I searched everywhere until I realized that I dreamed about writing some blog posts. I suppose it’s better then dreaming about vampires and video games over and over and over again (which has been a lot of June).
A lot of the time, though, I can’t wait until I have a great dream or a sudden insight when I’m working on something. Often I’ll be sitting there, looking at a document on my computer or laptop, thinking. I can almost hear the document asking “Well? Are you going to do something, or just sit there all day and act like you know what the fuck you’re doing?”
Yes, I have an antagonistic relationship with word processing software. It’s a writer thing. You don’t want to know how I deal with some of the other pieces of software in our office.
Ultimately, I have to call the document’s bluff and actually write, which means that I can’t wait for inspiration – I have to yank that motherfucker right from the air and shove it into the page, squealing and squirming. But it’s not that simple, either. You can’t just sit there and go “Okay, I’ll be inspired to do this now.” You have to prepare for that.
Let me switch gears for a moment. I’ve officially been on vacation since July 2nd. During that time I’ve played a lot of video games, watched a lot of television, read a number of articles and short stories I’ve been meaning to read, and also done some email and some writing. A number of people have all been like “But you’re on vacation. Relax a bit!” But the truth is that I suck at vacationing – both Michelle and I do. It’s not quite that we’re workaholics – that implication is that we’re addicted to work. Rather, the stuff we like to do to relax ends up turning into a project of some kind. Neither of us is ever really not working – we’re just working in different ways.
So, when a writer says “I need a vacation,” often what he means is “I need to refill my inspiration tank.”
Your inspiration tank is what you dive into when you’re staring at that blank page who is just so damn smug that it won’t stop smirking at you and calling you names under its breath. When you’ve got nothing sitting at the top of your brain, you have to start digging around in your tank and seeing what fits (or at least what doesn’t fit in an interesting and engaging way). My short story “Gloomy Sunday” had a place to use a conversation I had with Russell about suicide gender patterns. “New Wave Requiem” gave me a chance to inject some of that hip-hop history I had been sitting on. “Whitechapel” allowed me to showcase some weird bits of Cincinnati lore that I’ve been meaning to use somewhere.
And, like any other tank, it can run empty. If you spend a lot of time writing or working on one particular thing, even if you’re excited about it, you’ll run dry, and you have to look at something different just to change it up. No matter how much you love sci-fi, sometimes you just need to watch a cop drama. No matter how much you love Roman history, once in a while you should pick up a book on the Victorians. And no matter how awesome the game you’re working on is, every now and then you have to play other games. I find that it’s those different edges that gives me inspiration again, something to fill my tank back up.
One of the best ways to help me keep a small trickle of ideas flowing into my tank is Google Reader. I’m subscribed to several dozen RSS feeds on a variety of topics, and every day or two I go in and glance at them. I’ll probably skip 80% of them just on the title, skim another 10%, read 5% regularly (like my webcomics, the Escapist, and Chuck’s blog), but the last 5% is usually something weird that caught my eye and I decided to dig into. I’ll also look into weird things that people send to me or I find on Twitter or Facebook. Sometimes I’ll toss into into my “idea pile,” which is a notebook on Evernote, but often the germ of the thought will stick in the back of my head. I also carry a notebook with me everywhere I go, and many times my random thoughts look more like a grocery list or a connection of random words than any coherent idea. But it’s all part of the process.
So that’s what I’m doing now, when I’m not dealing with stuff that I should actually be taking a vacation from. I’m playing video games, watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading books, attending a series of lectures on ARGs, and randomly surfing the Internet to find what’s interesting. I’m building up my storehouse of idea germs so that when I come back into work, I can kick that smug fucking word processor right in the teeth and go “You think you know me? It’s on, bitch.”
How do you refill your inspiration tank?
This is going to sound dork-tastic, but I usually reload it by reading books for games I have no intention of playing, listening to all-subject podcasts like Stuff You Should Know (from how Stuff Works), and playing videogames that are overloaded with historical references (I’m looking at you, Assassin’s Creed II!). These things generally hit on archetype ideas and tiny plot elements that were peripheral to the source and leave a lot of room for extrapolation and development. My brain naturally wants to build on little hooks and flesh them out into major plot points, so anything that hits on a wide base of ideas that go unfinished is like crack for me.
Either that’s not dork-tastic, or I’m equally dorkish, because I’m totally with you. I listen to Stuff You Missed In History Class a lot, as well as some other random topic podcasts (like 60 Second Psych). It’s another way to get a stream of relatively random information to bump up against and get new ideas from. Hell, a fair chunk of my superhero game I’m swiping from 24, of all places.
Generally, I just switch gears– For me, it’s not a single tank of inspiration but many, as I do a great many different creative things. When I cannot do character art, I paint fish and flora in watercolor. When I cannot draw/paint at all, I consider crafts and jewelry. Sometimes I elect for writing instead, and when I find myself blocked there too, I read. If I don’t have the focus for uninterrupted reading, I play WoW.
But the most reliable way of recharging any storetanks, for me, is to physically surround myself with creative people. This is not really possible where I currently reside, but that is why I travel. My trip just last weekend to Atlanta was a huge boost, and I am now overwhelmed by more ideas than I even have the time to give proper attention to (I was figuratively assaulted by a stage play script idea on the 8 hour drive back home).
So, taking a break is always good, but I don’t think it’s possible for creative types to ever stop being actively imaginative and creative– to me, the effort comes from trying to communicate and share these ideas in a way that satisfies us ~_~
That’s a good point — I confess I get a lot of that at work (I’ve gotten a ton of ideas just talking over the lunch table with folks), but conventions also fill that need for me.
But yeah, creatives can’t really stop, but sometimes you need to go a different direction to avoid burnout. I’ve actually burned out and survived to tell the tale, so I’m sometimes a little oversensitive to burnout symptoms (which is why I sometimes phrase things in terms of taking breaks and vacations).
Oh yeah, I’ve done the same– did a dozen book illustrations that destroyed my ability to do -anything- creative outside of vague online RP for almost half a year. It’s definitely important to keep aware of, and know when it’s appropriate (even beneficial) to push oneself and when one really needs to step away.
Conventions are useful as well, though as I’m usually selling art there isn’t as much time to actually connect and create with other people (unless we do art-jams after business hours). OTOH, those are actually some of my most productive times– the last convention I went to I finished three watercolor paintings at my table. I blame the energy that I don’t often have on a daily basis (my job, my town, they are like creativity black holes).
Good thoughts! I should look into that more, when I’m running low on inspiration: experience media that’s utterly and totally unrelated. For instance, I’m writing up a new setting for 4th Edition, to use with a gaming group, and I had changelings make an appearance as awakened constructs used in substitution of humans. (A bit like taking the fetches from Changeling: The Lost, and having them gradually gain sentience, like the Prometheans)
I kinda left it. I went, and started reading I, Robot. The Changelings now have an equivalent to the Three Laws of Robotics.
Exactly! Some stuff bounces around in your head, and comes out a different way which is kind of cool.
I think we all have the same kind of tank filler. For a few months now, I’ve been working on a fanmade WoD gameline, but then my tank gets empty so I begin to work on an other RPG I’m making and the ideas for project number 1 comes back.
Subject #1 makes you think of subject #2, which reminds you of last monday’s conversation with Mr. X about subject #3 and then, the tank is full. Does that kind of things happen to you? It does happen to me, and it can scare my girlfriend because it happens in less then 1 second… and she can’t always see the links.
And music can be good too. Music can bring a lot of things to mind.
When I was freelancing regularly, I would often have a couple different projects going at the same time, so I could do exactly the kind of switching back and forth you mention. Nowadays, though, I have too much on my plate usually, so I have to try other methods, but there are still plenty of times where my brain hopscotches across multiple topics to get to a new and interesting conclusion.