It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. One challenge I had occurred last week.
My Writing Challenge for the Month
The challenge was a bit of writer's imposter syndrome. I felt like I was playing writer rather than being writer because it seemed like the one-hour time slot that my day job as library technician allows for me each weekday evening hasn't been enough to write and come out with a new book frequently enough. I was even more limited on time to writing fiction because I was working on my monthly Book-To-Movie review. Because of that, I had to take the week off from working on my concept sketch for the illustration to the cover for "Bad Apps", my soon-to-release book of short fiction. I was finally able to return to working on the concept sketch this week. I'm now in the colouring phase. After I'm done with the sketch, I'll send it to an illustrator in which I'll be soon be contacting one out of several I've been considering. Hopefully he can offer me a good deal.
IWSG Question of the Month
Now for the IWSG monthly question. Answering the monthly question is optional. So, the question is Do most of your story ideas come from one place (the news, dreams, etc.) or do they hit from all over the place? They mostly hit from all over the place. That's why when someone ask me the question so many of us writers get tired of hearing, which is "Where do you get your story ideas from?", I simply reply to them, "Life." Everything we write in our stories comes from our life experiences in one way or another. It can be an event that happened to us, such as getting lost for a day in the mountains, or it can be another person's experience told to us which the stories we receive from other people are a part of life themselves.
My ideas for stories are so infused with things that happened to me or that I heard about happening to someone else that I don't even think of them when I write my stories. When I get an idea for a story, I usually jot it down in my journal and then will develop it into a work when I feel enthused enough to. If I don't feel enthused enough, then I'll look for another story idea that I have written down.
Upcoming Author's Newsletter
If you're subscribed to it, look out for my next free author newsletter coming out in the next week or two. In that edition, I'm planning on featuring the concept sketch for the book cover for "Bad Apps". If you're not subscribed to the newsletter, then you can subscribe here.
If you work a day job in addition to your writing career, how do you balance the two? Do your story ideas come from one source or several? Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: Victoria Marie Lees, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and C. Lee McKenzie! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!
Until next time . . .
Yup, life. Sounds about right.
ReplyDeleteLife, where would our stories be with out it? Lol
DeleteI do work a day job and it is constantly throwing me barriers to get writing done, but I'm trying to work out some flexibility in my schedule to allow for more writing time. I hope you can figure out something that works for you, and congratulations at being at the point where you're working on the book cover!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Yeah, I may just have to move some activity around or reduce it to get more writing done.
DeleteFrom life experiences - good answer.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm dedicated to writing a book, I guess I just force myself to work on it for an hour or two every night.
Force: that's what I have to do with myself to get any amount of writing done. Its all about self-discipline.
Delete