Random Subject

[anirbas]

What inspires you to write?

Are you triggered to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, by events in your own life and your experiences?

Or, do you find yourself bemused by other sources?People's lives, including strangers, and/or their experiences and perspectives ?

[moseley]

Delthea Jones. My ninth grade english teacher...a large bodied black woman who wore a polyester dress that she did not look comfortable in, that she had skin tags and visually, one might find her uncomely but to look at her face and what it light up when she says the word "onomatopoeia"....this is a woman who's husband has a farm, large, kind man, hard work...raises pigs, fixes cars, raises chickens, sells vegetables....died in the field and she not long thereafter...sturdy hard working people, black, from the era of segregation but nothing bitter, hard, strong and God's people....to whom all the harshness of life and humanity could not dull the most beautiful face at the utterance of one uncommon word and that face and that word sets my soul on fire in both joy and shame as it is only posthumously and with a curse God has given me late in life that I now have a video playback memory, I always saw the beauty but often listened to the noise of my "peers"...but they don't see much more than shit and when they open their mouths, little more than shit can leave....bless them for they are full of shit but have yet to at least turn it into a useful manure, and I, no better, wish, seldomly, to make something better of the gas about my inner cranium to maybe set fire more than just a gag bag on your front porch step....then I relax and I just write and it comes out like onomatopoeia or many times worse and sometimes I say "look at this shit" and sometimes they do and sometimes someone says, this isn't shit. I write to hear "this isn't shit" even if I am only speaking...and I write when I tire of shadow boxing...or when I am tired of being tired....but I have nothing left to prove so why not write better, because it could be there.

[heartfelt7]

I think man is always moved to express his emotions, especially those that fill us to the brim, like love or hate can do. But looking at current events shows what hate brings, and the words that incite it. I have been looking for that prayer that the Senate chaplain said last week, that words have power, even the power of life and death. So I am going to be more careful with my words, and ponder how they may affect my world. In the meantime, I wish there were some huge repository that could take all the stories of lives changed in this world, by the pandemic, by our beliefs, by our actions. And reading those heartbreaking stories could maybe bring some healing, some compassion, some forgiveness for all of us.

[darkness0within]

What inspires you to write?

All of the above in a nutshell Anibas.

Many things inspire me to write. I've seen the best, and the worst of people over time and that is always an inspiration to me. Times change however emotions are timeless and would be understood if it were now, in the past, or in the future.

I go through dry spells in writing from time to time, but I store what I see around me to write about later.

[anirbas]

Thanks, y'all, for participating. Oops. The Texas in me slipped out with that y'all. Meh. It is what it is.

[phantasm]

What inspires me to write:

A) Pure imagination. The raw idea of what may be possible out there, even a handful of things that are impossible, at least not possible in the current framework of physics.

It's what draws me to science fiction and stuff adjacent to it.

B) Knowledge and understanding. Being a halfway decent writer means you have to read. And I read fairly broadly. Just reading other people's books makes me say to myself, "I could do that." And so I do. Also , it requires you to think. I love thinking. I have often found unique insights are to be had in sf, they're often stated explicitly in a way that no one would dream of saying on say, a TV show like The West Wing or House of Cards. (btw, I am bingeing my way through the latter and it's pretty good overall.)

C) Getting different perspectives. This feeds into bullet point B. Especially the well-written alien species create ways of looking at stuff in the universe with a different point of view, or at least it feels like you're getting a different POV. When I've tried my hand at writing alien species, it totally moves me into a different kind of head space, although I need to work on my skill in that department.

D) The expansiveness of the universe. This feeds into bullet points A and B. The more we study the universe, the more we comprehend how staggeringly immense it is. Anything seems possible, what with the millions of galaxies that we've discovered out there.

E) Exploring fictional universes. How a star drive might work. What lies on the surface of other planets. Even, strong magical systems that follow rock-solid rules in some fantasy. Exploring and understanding what's possible in a fictional world also turns me on.

[shore]

The need to entertain.