Monday, May 11, 2015

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

I accidentally double-booked myself, so I'm going to be a bit of a brat and give you a taste of the post here, with a jump to the Relentless Writers, my group blog for the rest of it. Please bear (bare?) with me and make the jump, but keep an eye out over here because very soon I'm going to have a happy announcement about my contemporary romance King Stud...)

 Where do you get your ideas?
I'm a writer. People ask me that. And when they ask, I want to do this...
Yeah Ke$ha, I don't know either.
Because tearing my hair out is easier than trying to explain how I come up with my ideas. Take my current project...

Jack rides his bike from Portland to Seattle in January because his maybe-ex-boyfriend's mom is in the hospital and he doesn't want to accept the gift of an airplane ticket. Will his stubborn streak end things for good, or can he and Gregory find a way to rekindle their love?

As hard as it is to summarize a 200 page story in fifty words, it's even harder to explain how I came up with it in the first place. Most people who aren't writers (or artists, or musicians, or participants in any other kind of creative endeavor) think ....

 Ah yes, to learn what most people think, you'll have to jump HERE. Thanks for playing along...


Gratuitous Prince. Because, Prince.
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4 comments:

  1. Linda Maye AdamsMay 11, 2015 at 3:06 PM

    I think one of the mystiques about ideas is that a lot of people think that you just need the right idea and the whole story simply happens (skipping all those pesky steps like writing the story). Way too many writers also think they have to have the "right" idea, as if the whole story counted on it being perfect; whereas the idea is only a starting point and not the story itself.

    I can tell you where all mine came from, on each individual story. I saw a themed guideline the other day for a literary magazine that said something like "river running like milk under the bridge," so I'm doing a fantasy story about a river that's been polluted with magic. I had another story that started with a blue fuzzy pillow, which turned into weird soft ground on an alien planet and aliens who ate all the officers.

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    1. Liv RancourtMay 11, 2015 at 3:52 PM

      I wrote a whole book after seeing a picture of Eric Dane one time, but I'll be damned if I can tell you where I came up with the idea of basing a story around a 200 mile bike ride. I do know that in both cases, there was a bit of work involved between "A-Ha!" and having the story on the page.
      Thanks Linda!

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  2. Ellen GregoryMay 12, 2015 at 5:26 AM

    Happy announcement re King Stud... :-D
    PS - I can never answer this question.

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    1. Liv RancourtMay 12, 2015 at 5:33 AM

      You'll be one of the first to know when it's official, Ellen!

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