Where to Find Story Inspiration: Pinterest Edition

One of the most hilariously frustrating questions to get asked as a writer is where and how you come up with the ideas for your stories. The answer “I don’t know, about eleven million different places, marinated and shaken just the right way” doesn’t usually work for people, no matter how true it might be.

But for the vast majority of the time, that’s how things work in my brain. At least, that’s what I’ve figured out by now. Complete story ideas and inspiration are two different things entirely. Very rarely do ideas just show up in my brain fully formed, ready to be written.

However, it’s a legitimate question, which requires some sort of reasonable explanation- how DO I get my ideas? At first glance, I couldn't figure out how to explain where my ideas came from, my head not really being a helpful answer to anyone who isn't me.

Second glance, I've come to the realization that since I seem to get my ideas from everywhere, that isn't too specific and therefore not entirely helpful either.

However, before you roll your eyes and stomp away from my very unhelpful post, I’ll tell you about one of the tools I use that has completely changed the way I brainstorm.

Pinterest.

Pinterest? You may ask. You mean that wonderful time suck that I pin all sorts of fabulous crafty projects that I probably won’t be making ever and are just there to guilt me about the fact that I’m not the perfect women?

Oh, hon.

You are using Pinterest in ALL the wrong ways.

Okay, so I also pin crafty things and dream house things and ideas for my classroom. But I mainly use Pinterest for finding and storing ideas for future books.

I approach the pictures on Pinterest the same way I approach people watching. First you just scan what's there. Who's there. Someone or something is going to catch your attention at some point. At this point on Pinterest, I'll pin it- usually to the board I have called Ideas. (I know. I'm super original.) 

Then, of course, comes the questions to ask about the person or thing. What is it? Why is it there? How did it/he/she get there? Where are they going? And so on and so forth, until suddenly you have the beginnings of a story.

There are a few different ways for you to search through Pinterest- you can search on your main dashboard where all the things pinned by the people you follow will show up. You can also use the search feature, and either type in a specific keyword, or scan through categories- everything from Geek to Travel to Women’s Fashion. If you don’t have anything in specific you’re looking for, the Popular category is a mishmash of everything.

Sometimes all it takes is one picture for an idea to form. Sometimes it's a few pictures. 

I’m going to be honest with you: Pinterest is a dangerous place- once you get there, it’s not always easy to get back out. Self-control is definitely needed for it. But fear not- you can find inspiration quite easily without Pinterest.

• Swap pictures with a friend, but someone whose family you don't really know so well. Have them send you a picture- any picture- to get your creative juices flowing.
• Pick up a foreign newspaper, and look at the pictures there. You have no idea what anything means, so you just have to decide that by yourself.
• Check out photographer’s websites, and think up the backstory of the people photographed.

Or you can play the connect the dots game, and outsource this one a bit as well. This is also a fun writer’s group activity if all of you are looking for ideas.

If doing this with a writer’s group, everyone should bring in one picture that intrigues them- whatever kind of picture they want. No limits (unless you specifically want to set them, though I don't recommend it). If you're meeting in person, print enough copies so that everyone can have one for themselves. If you're emailing, email a copy to everyone. 

If you’re doing it as a solitary activity, ask five of your friends to send you one picture they love, but without any descriptions or explanations as to why they love it.

The objective of the activity is for you to take the pictures you have and find out how and why they're connected. What's so incredible about this exercise is no two people will have the same story, even though you're all using the same pictures.

Man, creativity is so cool :)

Bonus: I've picked five random pictures from my Pinterest boards to jump start your creativity. 

Picture One:

Picture Two:

Picture Three:

Picture Four:

Picture Five:

Happy pinning, happy plotting, and happy writing!

KK Hendin writes NA books to make your heart happy. She blogs at http://www.kkhendinwrites.blogspot.com/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/kkhendin

Beating Writer's Block

It's all happened to every writer at one point or another. You have a great idea! Great character with a great voice in a really great dilemma! Things are going swimmingly, until suddenly ... they are not.

You don't know what to do. You hate everything. Or (worst possible scenario) you are BORED.

You lost the spark in your writing. And you can't figure out why.

Before I tell you what to do, let me tell you a couple stories.

Stephen King is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this is one of my all-time favorite analogies, so bear with if you've already heard me deliver it. In Misery, King describes a writer named Paul who is being held captive by his biggest (read: craziest) fan. Writers often give their opinions about life and humanity through their work, and lots of people view Misery as a prime example of King telling the reader what it is like to be a writer.

The line that stuck out to me from Misery is, “Paulie, can you?” You see, Paul's problem is that he killed off his main character and ended a long-running series. Annie, the fan who "rescued" him from a car accident, is insisting that he write himself out of that corner and resurrect poor Misery Chastain, or be killed off himself. And of course, Paul is thinking, "How do I get Misery out of her coffin and back in the land of the living?"

Paul doesn't want to write any more Misery books. That's why he killed Misery. But in this one instance, he really, really has to.

In his drug-addled, foot-chopped-off condition, Paul starts hallucinating about a memory from kindergarten when the little kids played a game where one started a story, and the next kid added to it, and then the kid after that, and so forth. Paulie, can you?

And the point of the game wasn’t to come up with some Pulitzer-prize winner or a New York Times bestseller ... it was just to keep the story going. “Can you, or can’t you?” And if you can’t, the game is over (and in poor Paul’s case, you’re going to be murdered and chopped up into little bits.)

Writing, whether you're plotting or pantsing, is sort of like a game of “Can you or can’t you.”  If you want to be a good writer, all that really matters is if you “can.”  You may be a genius with the ability to write prose that would make Shakespeare weep, but if you “can’t” on a consistent basis, then you can’t. People who put in the time and effort, and are honest with themselves, will always be able to get to the point where they “can” on a consistent basis.

Look at this one other way (not to belabor the point). A friend of mine is a computer programmer, and he pointed me to this anecdote:

"A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

The lesson, of course, is whether you're writing books or code or throwing pots, the more you do, the better you are.

So what to do when you've felt the spark go out in your writing? Well, I think you have a few options.

1. Take a mental palate cleanser. Go for a walk. Play a game. Read a book. Watch (good) TV. No Keeping Up With The Kardashians, we're talking Breaking Bad or Parks and Rec or nothing. If it doesn't make you think (and I do mean THINK) about something different for awhile, it's useless to you.

When you feel refreshed, return to the writing. And if you still don't feel the spark, go to Step 2.

2. Quit making excuses and start typing, Paulie. Remember our pal Paul and his dilemma? Do you think it mattered to him that he hated Misery and hated that she couldn't ever pick between Ian and Geoffrey and he wished he'd never started the stupid series? NO! His foot was about to be chopped off! So just write for awhile, like your ability to remain ambulatory depends on it. And after awhile, evaluate whether that worked. If it didn't, go to Step 3.

3. Take everything you've just written and put it in your "Extras" folder. I have a theory that no writer really ever deletes anything. I can't bring myself to erase pages (and days) of hard work. Usually when something has to go, I put it in what I call my "Extras" folder. 

This is helpful for two reasons. One, you never know when something you wrote in that folder will be helpful after all. (It's happened to me a few times.) Two, it's nice to have a tangible (as tangible as a computer file is) reminder of all the pots you've thrown. Now move to Step 4.

4. Continue your current story in a different spot. So you've gotten yourself bogged down. Your main character is trapped on the top floor of the house and the murderer is in the kitchen, and there's no way she can get outside without passing him. You don't know what to do, and the more you think about it, the more you want Det. Ex Machina to show up and save the day because you're so confused/frustrated/bored

. 

This is what I want you to do: type "XXX," then hit your return/enter key a couple times and start somewhere else. Oh, now your main character is having a sweet moment with her love interest. Oh, now you're revealing how the bad guy left fiber evidence behind at the scene. Oh, now you're describing a really awesome road trip that actually has no place in your novel, but at least you're stoked to be writing it! 

When you're done, all you have to do is find all the spots you typed XXX and fill in your gaps. Usually you're going to find that those spots aren't nearly as bad as they were the first go-around. Did that work? If not, skip to Step 5.

5. Stop. This book is an abandoned pot. Don't feel bad about it, because the more pots you throw, the better writer you're going to be. But don't keep coming back to it, because if this project isn't ever going to hold water properly (the analogy has now gone too far ...) you're wasting your time. Who wants to agonize over an unfinished pot? Save it in a file on your desktop somewhere and move on to your next project. Someday you might find some use for it, or not. But don't feel bad about moving on.

Go make something else!