Visual Inspiration

As #wipmadness continues, our fabulous host Kip Wilson Rechea blogged about visual inspiration for this week's reflection. She shared a few snapshots of the visuals that keep her inspired and fill her WIP with authentic setting details.  I have always used visuals to feed my WIP-ping heart and create atmosphere and inspiration as I plow through each draft. Sadly, I spend most of my days in a lab at the university, so I'm not really free to paper my walls with all the cool photos and bits of flotsam that drive my writing. So, I have papered my Scrivener bulletin board with them:

Of course, my Project 365 blog as well as my new adventures in Light and Shadow have helped me fine-tune my senses to those amazing little details of the world around us that bring my story to life. I just hope I am doing it justice when I write. Through these bits of setting or hardware or direction, I'm pushing to create that world, to make it real enough for the reader to embrace. Shapes, textures, light, and shadow—it's all essential.

I suppose if I papered my little corner of the lab with all my scraps and photos, security might think I was a psycho or something, building my little WIP/stalker shrine. Ah well...I suppose it would just keep them guessing...

Shrinking the Cosmos, a Writer's Guide to the World

That may be a big title for a small idea, but the notion hit me today as I sat munching on my salad and reading Inside Out and Back Again. I realized how differently I see the world now that I am an active writer. Sure, I'm a grown-up too, full of wisdom and introspection (ha!),  but I'm not sure I would take the time to consider the world in the same way if I weren't a writer, no matter what my age.

Of course, I started as a reader. A lover of stories. An explorer of histories. A scientist on a quest. I can't help it. Every day I catch myself examining the smallest bits of the world around me and asking why and why not and what does it all mean? A snippet of conversation overheard at Burger King suddenly becomes a momentous revelation that must be celebrated...somewhere. Out of nowhere, that stupid thing I did in 5th grade makes sense all these years later. As expansive as the universe seems, there is a reason you can find the word microcosm in the dictionary.

I might be taking a little writing break at the café. Some kid walks in dressed like an oompa loompa or a pro wrestler or a Sid Vicious wannabe. Rather than retreat to my comfort zone and chalk it up to drug addiction or mental illness, I ask myself questions like: What did he eat for breakfast? What frightens him the most? What does it feel like to wear that?  What is the last thing his father said to him? Has he ever saved a life? Or lost a life? How many times has he lost his keys in the last month?

The deeper I am buried in a writing project, the more powerful these moments are. The more open I become to the unexpected simply because it is so...human. That is easy to forget. In this time of convenience foods and mass production and social media overload, the truly human has been homogenized and processed out of our curiosity and replaced with a simple like or #epicfail in our minds and then we move on. Life has become so conspicuous. We laugh and watch it go viral, never considering where it came from in the first place. At least it seems that way for many people I've met.

Sure, the whole public persona thing is nothing new, but it has become a much more concerted effort in the modern world. If we really look hard, listen closely, lay our hands on long enough to feel what wriggles beneath the surface, we can know life. Honest to God, painful, joyful, twisted life. As a writer, I always want to know and feel more. I want to understand why and see where that connects to my own experience or what it tells me about the universe.

Marlo Thomas, I hear ya...free to be you and me...right on. But what's behind the performance of you and me?  Always more. Much more. The writer in me will keep asking. She will always put it under the microscope and look for what she knows and then look at what she doesn't know.

And wouldn't it be awesome if our kids did that a little more? So often their cruelty comes from fear of the unknown. The unknown is not what lies in the other kid, either.

Distractions

As you can gather from some of my recent blogs, I've been in serious need of distractions lately. I've considered blogging about the complexities of grief and the insanity of dysfunctional families, but I think I (and anyone who might stumble upon this blog) would be better off saving those musings for my next YA novel. Of course as a writer, just about any life experience, no matter how big or small, is fodder for some masterpiece in the making.

Consider my latest MOD (mode of distraction)—backyard birding. Yes, I could sit for hours watching the intricate ecosystem that is our backyard, if it weren't for the 105º heat. However, even with the scorching summer sun, I spend a lot of time in the lawn chair with Ghost Hunk's 2-ton camera in my lap while I meditate on life's crap and watch the birds. It's amazing the personality you can find out there. These are just a few interesting fellows who gather in the yard regularly:









There is so much chatter in my yard that I have to wonder what they talk about. Are they griping about their passive/aggressive maniacal sisters who seem bound to make life absolute hell? Are they gossiping about the neighbors and who's cheating on whom? Or is the greatest concern on their little minds how fast the bird seed seems to be disappearing from the plastic tube this crazy woman with the funky machine in her lap has hung on the wrought iron hook next to the tree?

And then I wonder...

Do they know how rich and welcome their songs are at the first light of day? Do they realize how much I love to watch them go through their day, chattering away in the trees about who-knows-what? Do they ever see themselves as little saviors who guard my sanity?

Hm...

They should.

The Flotsam File

I have one. A file full of the flotsam that clogs my brain at night when I'm trying to fall asleep or that distracts me to dangerous ends when I'm driving. Those little nuggets of gold that may (or may not) someday make it into one of my books. (Yes, I plan to write a lot!) It could be a piece of dialogue overheard somewhere. Perhaps a completely incongruous image that popped up on the road along the way. Even a name that cries out for attention. Lots of little pieces of nothing that might become something.

So I'm on my way to the store the other day, and here comes one of those bits of flotsam, jaunting up the road, oblivious to the world. An RV. Not just any RV. An RV boldly branded with the words, "THE INTRUDER". As if Winnebago isn't nerdy enough. So my brain went to a teenager, forced to spend his vacation traveling with Grandma and Grandpa in an RV emblazoned with that unforgivable moniker. A true and glorious king of nerd-dom might embrace it and revel in the irony. But most teens would be mortified.

Of course, I could always add in that fabulous image of a giant head of Eddie Murphy traveling down the road in front of them (or even in tow behind them!)!

Ah...flotsam.