My internet's being very finicky today, so I don't think I'll get the chance to post all the themes I wanted to--have to leave for work in twenty minutes, dontcha know. I really wanted to get this one started, though. This'll be one of those "questions about writing" threads, because everyone seems to like those well enough; these questions will mostly relate to inspiration. Because I like it. :D

(Yes, writer-types, there will also be theme prompts, I'm just sick of wrestling with this little monster today and I still have to buy tickets for The Hunger Games, so...priorities, you see.)

A lot of us want to be writers, or at least would like it very much if we could find time for writing between the other activities of our daily lives. My question to all of you is, what started you writing?

I can pinpoint it to the night in fifth grade when I finished Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong for the first time. I'd written as a hobby before, but when I finished that book I knew it was something I wanted to put my heart and soul into. I wanted to write something that would make some future fifth-grade girl finish it with tears in her eyes.

Maybe you don't have a single inspiration. Maybe there've been several. Maybe you've given up on writing a few times, and have had something shove you back in.

So, let's hear about it. :)

As far back as I can remember, I'd always loved coming up with stories. When I was about six or seven, I started drawing them. Basically, I'd title it and then draw a series of pictures portraying different events. I did this for several years. I gave actual writing a shot, but I had difficulties starting, getting into a particular story, or getting a satisfactory ending. Even though I loved stories, writing was more of a hobby for me.

The big leap for me came in 2002. I saw "Fellowship of the Ring" for my 13th b-day (I hated it at first, but that's a different story), and that had me start reading Tolkien. That was my first real introduction to fantasy (I'd read some of "Chronicles of Narnia" before, but it hadn't been very inspirational to me), and I started devouring the fantasy genre. And writing it.

So I think Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" is what really got me on the path to loving writing and becoming rather obsessed with it. Other stories have inspired me also, but recently some of my biggest inspiration comes from my large musical library, history books, or geeking out over anthropology. Another inspiration is reading bad stories or ones with good ideas but bad content and getting inspiration to write something better (I've got quite a few rewrites for "Twilight," "Binding of the Blade," "Inheritance Cycle," and "A Song of Fire and Ice" in the works).





A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

Oooh, that's a tough one. I spent my entire life reading, but for the longest time never considered writing as something to do. But that's not do say I didn't create. I spent well into my preteens (I'm going to say about 11 or 12) playing imaginary games with my friends, which involved highly elaborate plots and character bases. I switched from child to adult literature when I was about 11, put tonnes of effort into any story we had to write in school, but I don't think it was until I joined here that I realized that normal people actually wrote books.

At which point I dove into writing with a great fury and never looked back. :D

lol my first "story" was a history project. i was supposed to be writing soem stuff down about either the greek or egyptian pantheon and it just kinda exploded form there into an old guy telling the history of the gods to little kid o na cold witnery day. since then i have always tried to write THAT EPIC SAGA but only recently let most of my possible THAT EPIC SAGA's die in favor of short story writing.... which died off in its turn =P

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That which does not feel pain is dead.

I can't really pinpoint when I first started writing. The earliest I can remember, I would make picture stories where the pictures took up an entire page, and usually I would have six or seven per story. Then I "graduated" to comic book-sort-of-things, where I would draw lines on a paper to make comic strips, and then draw a picture in each box and narrate underneath. Then at about nine I started my first real "book" with no pictures, and after going through several stages of recreating the story, I finally wrote a complete rough draft for it when I was twelve (which was also the year I joined BotB. Maybe the two are related). Been writing ever since.

I remember the first thing I ever wrote seriously. I just got my first computer, an old clunky Gateway from my grandpa. no internet, just a couple of sample pictures that i kept switching around for inspiration, and Microsoft Word. I was probably 10 or 11. I always devoured books, and so it was kind of natural for me to write stories. But I had terrible handwriting, and always hated it, so when I had a computer and could type it really opened up a whole new world for me.

The first serious thing I ever wrote was an epic fantasy/lord of the rings rip off that took me about 3 years to "finish". it was terribly crappy (ask Var....she knows) but it was a big accomplishment to say i'd written a novel (prob around 150k words)

My inspiration back then was mainly Lord of The Rings, and any other epic fantasy books I could find. I wrote strictly high fantasy. Over the years my tastes have changed a lot (though I'm still a fantasy lover at heart). Its funny cause I've been writing for like 9ish years, mostly pretty consistently, and I just feel like over the past 2 I'm really getting comfortable with my voice. But its exciting!

This board definitely had a lot of influence, and gave me a lot of encouragement over the years, I'm glad some of us are still around plugging away :D

Thats my story :P

When did I start writing? Hm. I think my first book was finished at age three, when I wrote "I sa a brtfli" (Translation: I saw a butterfly) on printer paper and illustrated the masterpiece myself. :P
Because of grammar, I came to HATE writing until about fourth grade, when Mom threw up her hands and said to heck with grammar, you can take a semester off. I started writing again, and Mom decided not to touch that thing. LOL
As for inspirations....pretty much Laura Ingles Wilder and C.S. Lewis (Mom and Dad's chosen reading-out-loud material, respectively) until I discovered the wonders of owning a library card.

A'right, next question:

Most of you are currently working on a story or two. What inspired those? Was there a particular issue you wanted to talk about, or worldbuilding idea? Did it start with a character, a place, a scene? Do you use anything to keep yourself "in the mood" to work on it--music, movies, other books, art?

Those of you who haven't answered the first question, feel free to tackle that one first if you like. No time limit on any of these. :)

I've got quite a few I'm working on currently... er, at least in various stages of "oh, I'm really into it right now" or "eh... I'll set it aside for a while, but it's still on my mind."

Story #1- a science fiction story about government conspiracies and genetic experimentation on humans. The story originally started out as a "Fringe"-esque rewrite due to my frustrations with the third (and fourth) seasons of the show. But now it's more of how playing God with genetics is wrong and what the consequences could be.

Story #2- a retelling of the "Beauty and the Beast" story. It's developed more into a theme of anger/ bitterness and consequences and healing from said anger/ bitterness. I listen to Dargaard to get into the mood for it.

Story #3- "Twilight" rewrite. It's taken many different forms over the years, transforming from something similar to the original but getting farther away from the source content. I've enjoyed the worldbuilding for this one: the explanation for vampires, defining their biology, how vampires feed or otherwise survive, and (my favorite part) creating the coven members who all come from different historical periods and are impacted by the times they came from (i.e. American War for Independence, Battle of Hastings, Siege and Fall of Jerusalem in 1187, The Reformation, etc...) Watching Rifftrax commentaries on "Twilight" gets me in the mood.

Story #4- Historical fiction book about a Medieval Irish culdee refusing to submit to the Roman church and so sail into the Atlantic Ocean in the hopes of finding a new land. This one required a bit of research, but because we know very little about culdees and because most historians don't acknowledge any Trans-Atlantic contact before Columbus, I've had to use my imagination. Listening to Catholic choral songs and a few New Age pieces get me in the mood.






A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

Hmm. Well, some ideas I had for a world, plus a college teaching magic (in my limited experience, those are relatively rare in fiction), plus strange professors. But it's changed a lot since then...