Inspiration

[pittwitch]

Curiosity may kill the witch on this one, but I wonder: what inspires you?

[BronxWench]

Everything. I see a person, or someone makes a gesture, and it sets off a story in my head. The light from my terrace at the end of the day, the hawks setting up housekeeping down the street, or just the color of someone's dress. I have no end of inspiration. I just need to wait for it to gel into a story, and then hide somewhere and write an outline.

[pittwitch]

I keep flashing back to a lovely tattoo on a nice, young deckhand. Alas, time escapes me for the story to go with it.

[GeorgeGlass]

I suppose what inspires me most are other people. All of what I consider to be my best stories were somehow inspired by someone else who provided direction and limitations, eg, a contest with a particular theme and word limit. I'm doing a story exchange with someone who gave me an idea of the type of story they wanted, and it was something I never would have thought of doing, but suddenly my head filled with ideas for plot, characters, scenes, and so forth. In fact, I think what I came up with might actually be worthy of a novel, even though I have never seriously considered writing a novel before.

[JayDee]

I'm not sure, beyond people making the requests I've written for them, it may be random for me!

[green-tea]

I keep a journal of all my dreams. After a few years of doing this, my dreams started getting more vivid and detailed (or I started filling in the gaps immediately upon waking up, use your best theory here), to the point where most of my writing is just ripping stories straight out of my diary. I have beautiful, terrible, complicated worlds in my head and I get to walk through them and play my role, and this is what gets written down.

And the nightmares get written down just so I can get them somewhere OTHER than my head, because holy shit can they get bad sometimes.

[GeorgeGlass]

After a few years of doing this, my dreams started getting more vivid and detailed (or I started filling in the gaps immediately upon waking up, use your best theory here)

I'm not sure there's a difference.

And the nightmares get written down just so I can get them somewhere OTHER than my head, because holy shit can they get bad sometimes.

It occurs to me that the only famous female horror writer I can think of is Mary Shelley. Maybe it's time for another one.

[BronxWench]

Fie, George! Shirley Jackson was a superb writer of horror fiction. There's also Sarah Langan, and Tanith Lee writes horror as well. And what about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro?

[DemonGoddess]

I've also found over the years that F&SF women writers incorporate horror into their works as well.

[green-tea]

I tend to write F/SF, but yeah, I've been incorporating more and more horror into it. I'm trying to avoid self-censoring myself with the latest project. I do that too much, I think.

[GeorgeGlass]

Fie, George! Shirley Jackson was a superb writer of horror fiction. There's also Sarah Langan, and Tanith Lee writes horror as well. And what about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro?

I did say "the only famous female horror writer I can think of." And by "famous", I meant "famous enough that even I have heard of them."

Truth is, I don't think I've read a horror novel in at least a decade. Becoming an editor killed much of my desire to read in my spare time. Why it didn't also kill my desire to write, I'm not sure, except that writing fiction feels a lot different from correcting grammatical errors and fixing awkwardly constructed tables in scientific papers.

[GeorgeGlass]

I tend to write F/SF, but yeah, I've been incorporating more and more horror into it. I'm trying to avoid self-censoring myself with the latest project. I do that too much, I think.

One thing I've learned from posting stories on AFF is that self-censorship is counterproductive, at least in terms of attracting readership. For every awful thing you include in a story, you lose one reader and gain three others.