WHAT WILL CARRY YOU THROUGH

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” 
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

What will carry you through as a writer?

1. A Wild And Mad Daemon of a Muse:


If you want to survive, you’ve got to have an imagination that won’t lay down and die. 

Your cat has exploded?  Use it. 

Zombies are pounding on the door.  Ignore them.  Think of it as the pulse of your muse murmuring ideas to you.


2. Discipline:


No amount of imagination will help you unless you sit your tush in the chair, pound the keyboard, and put prose on the blank screen.

Need Motivation?

Come up with your own item of visual motivation. It might be inspirational words taped to your computer

(“You get what you dare, baby, and if you want big, you dare big”—author Leonard Bishop)


 The primary way writers keep discipline going is through the weekly quota. Most successful fiction writers make a word goal and stick to it.


Discipline is helped by a healthy body.


The imagination is housed in the brain. The brain is housed in the body. The body is the temple of the soul. Treat it as such.

Your productivity and creativity depend on it.  Take that brisk walk!  Both your body and muse need it. 


3. A Schizophrenic Frame of Mind:


You must be a triad:

Optimistic enough to believe your work will eventually be bought/

Realistic enough to know it will not be overnight/

Pessimistic enough to question the purity of human motives when you finally are handed a contract to sign.


4. Inner Strength:


You have to be able to pound nail after nail into board after board to build your Ark under a cloudless sky to the sound of derisive laughter behind you.

You must believe in yourself before anyone else will.

Face the Harsh Law:

What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do

You may believe your talent is one in a million, but it is what you do with it that counts.

Make it an inner contract to finish what you start,

to wring that final chapter out of your imagination, and to brave rejection and put it out there either by self-publication or submitting to agents/editors.


5. Curiosity:
 

"The important thing is not to stop questioning.

 Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.

It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
- Albert Einstein

Most writers are curious by nature. We look at the world around us and wonder at it.

Who are these people? What are we all doing here?

Where are we heading? Why do we do the things we do? How will we achieve our goals?

Remember how curious you were as a child?

Everything you encountered spawned a series of questions

because you were trying to learn and understand the world around you.

Bring that childlike curiosity back, and you’ll never need to look far for now, inspiring writing ideas.

By fostering curiosity, we can create a fountain of ideas.

It doesn’t matter what form your writing takes or what genre you’re writing in.

By coming up with intriguing questions, you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed with inspiration.

Take the basic questions and put a riveting spin to them:

Who?
Who does my main character trust? What does that say about them? About the trusted person?

What?
What motivates people to take drastic actions?

Where?
Where do these people want to be?

When?
When does a child become an adult?

Why?
Why does this story matter?

How?
How do you describe something that doesn’t really exist? 

Hope this helps in some small way.