Friday, June 6, 2014

Do I want to be a writer?

Off and on over the years I've pondered if I have the desire and enough of it to put in the labor needed to write. It seems like an easy task before beginning - find some idea and write. Of course it's not that easy and it's not that simple. One bit of counsel I see over and over in reading what authors say about writing is you need to actually write. Some set specific times when they write, others have page goals or some other way to push them into the task.

If I, or anyone really wants to write it's necessary to know why you are doing it. Is it because you want to write that great series of stories that the reader can't put down? It is to become wealthy? It is for the fame? Do you wish to record your life, or part of it for posterity?

Regardless - one has to actually DO it.

Years ago, I attended several conference presentations given by Orson Scott Card at Life, the Universe, and Everything which was held for many years at Brigham Young University. I believe it is held an Utah Valley University these days. It was titles 1001 Ideas in an Hour and the whole premise was to brainstorm as a group to come up with story ideas. Scott Card said it didn't matter how many people in the group wrote stories from the presentation because every story would be different. One concept that I remember was a planet inhabited by two sentient races that were quite unaware of each other because one hibernated in the cold season and the other was active then and ate the bodies of the deceased of the other race that were placed in caves.

Quite a different idea, but it ended up in several stories, including Card's.

Don't ever go with your first idea - odds are it's cliched and trite - think out of the box - lots of what-ifs. Stories can come from words or places or random thoughts. Ideas exist everywhere, but it takes training to see them.

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