I've been gone, but I think I made it through my notifications and got back to everyone. Lemme know if I owe you a reply to something and I'll get on it!
Anyway, on to today's rant, if you know me, you'll know that I have a plethora of ideas. As in too many for my own good. Seriously. You should come to my house and see all the binders of shit...it's too much.
So I get a lot of people asking me Where to Find Inspiration. The most obvious, best answer is: everywhere! But, since I know that people would ask if it were that simple, I thought I'd share with you some of the things that inspired a few of the pieces I've written that others have read (although I think only two of the ones I mention are posted on Wattpad? I dunno).
So let's start.
Inspiration can come from real life events that you need distance from. It's really a defense mechanism to confront your problems in a really subtle way. It's a small dose at a time of things you can control and that really helps.
I learned when I was seven that art, such as drawing, painting, music, and writing is a really, really good form of therapy. And I get that I have a ton of shit that has happened in my life for good writing material, but you don't have to be a walking tragedy to tell a good story.
You just have to lie a little.
The entirety of "Number Six" stemmed from one occurrence: my best friend's accident. I made up this entire story about two kids that get caught up in this elaborate serial killer's fantasy, because one night my best friend was in an accident that should have ended his life.
That's just how I deal with things. Even the smallest of problems, I blow them up and make them a story. I couldn't handle the fact that my best friend almost died in a stupid accident, so I made up Adrianne and Blake and I made up the fact that there was a reason Blake was in this mess.
But there was no reason that my best friend was in an accident. It just happened. Yes, there were so many things they could have done differently, but those things didn't matter. Sometimes bad things happen. And sometimes there's no reason at all.
"The Invisible Parade" I wrote a little closer to truth. It was my way of dealing with my best friend having a drug addiction and going to rehab and trying to get back on the right track. So suddenly I had common ground with the leads Eric and Catherine. Everyone is so busy watching Eric try to put on a show that they completely miss Catherine's problems. And it was kind of a reflection of how I felt, I guess.
Everyone that reads it is completely shocked when Catherine turns up to be the real problem, because they think she's supposed to be the saving grace, good girl, doll, but that's how things kind of happened.
Did I distort a lot of the things that happened in my real life? Yes. Oh yes. Did I change personality traits for the two leads? Hell yes.
But it wasn't about me. It was about all these feelings and it was a way to rationalize that between my best friend and I, there was only room for one of us to find our footing. So, while it did stem from a lot of the same events, everything that happens in "The Invisible Parade" isn't real, but it still has real heart.
It's a lot of the way I felt. Like I was living in this little dollhouse and those same feelings helped me write "How to Ruin a Reputation" about a girl named Lyla who just wants to be someone other than the poor girl that lost her mom and is living in the wake of her picket fence falling down and revealing the truth. Very little of what happens to Lyla has ever happened to me, but we share a lot of the same feelings.
I mean, not everyone deals with these problems, but I'm sure they've felt some of these emotions. Like, a desperation when you lose a friend. Who hasn't lost a friend? And who hasn't felt so uncertain about the future? It's called growing up. Who doesn't keep secrets? It's part of this charade everyone has going on. We're all wearing a mask, but as a writer you get to lie about what's underneath by using the way you feel. So I took these feelings and sometimes events and just amplified them when I wrote about these things to make the story more interesting.
And it doesn't even have to come from big events that play close to the vest. Sometimes I take feelings and translate them into things that have very little to do with the things that inspired them.
Once, when I was still in high school, my best friend and I were having this oddly lighthearted conversation about why we could never work out being in a real relationship, even though we'd tried. And I remember we were both laughing and making a joke out of something pretty serious and out of nowhere my best friend brings up a moment we'd had when we both kind of thought things would work out and he just said "I'm never going to get over that."
And I thought about it for a few years before finally being able to translate it to the idea behind "Wilting Holly". Instead of being about two friends that can't make a relationship work, it's about people that can't get over these things they think define their lives. Lily can't get over her abortion. Alex can't get over this crippling need to be liked by people. Holly couldn't get over this fear of being a disappointment to her parents.
No, I've never had an abortion. No, I've never been in love with a girl and committed suicide because I was too afraid of what my parents thought about it. (Though, I do admit I am desperate for affection at times. It's called being young).
But it doesn't matter. I wrote these things, because they helped me blow up and rationalize these feelings of being so caught up in a moment, or a person, or a feeling.
And one thing that people tell you all the time is to try to break out of the box and do things you've never done. I love that advice!
That's where "The Black Dahlia" came from (actually there's a long ass author's note and the beginning about why I wrote it), but the gist is that I wanted to write a first person point of view that tells multiple sides to a story. I know, I know, it's confusing, but that was the idea. It's about a girl who is trying to rationalize this murder committed by her friends. She hears all their sides, but doesn't know the real story outside of her own biases.
But it was a challenge. And although I have hardly nothing of it posted here, I think it turned out okay.
However, with that advice, they also say to never do what you've done before, but I don't agree with that at all. I think if something keeps coming up in different stories, it's something you need to write about again and again from different viewpoints to help you rationalize.
My biggest point: you can live in a glass house surrounded by a picket fence and still have a story to tell. Everyone has feelings. Take those feelings and give them an event. If you have an event, give it feelings. Translate everything into something else, because that's the most beautiful thing about life:
No one can tell you how to feel.
Your feelings can never be right or wrong, so don't worry about screwing up. Try. Just try.
Anyway, I'll shut up, because you all have to be tired of hearing about stories I've made up that you've never read. (Also, I put them in quotes instead of italicizing them, because it felt pretentious to cite them as books...when they aren't really).
And this is the part I'm most excited about. Tell me where you get your inspiration! If you're currently working on something, or you've finished something, tell me what inspired it. I'm so excited to know. Seriously, you guys don't even know how excited I am to hear about it from you guys. I love hearing about inspiration, so tell me! Inspire me!
I'll shut up now. This rant is a mess. It makes me feel like I should go clean my house now...