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Inspiration

So the question that’s on everybody’s minds, “How the hell does this genius come up with all this fantastic stuff? Where does he pull it all from? Has he done the things he writes about, does he sit secluded for hours on end and dream it up, does it come to him in his sleep? I sure wish I knew so that maybe I could be like him.” Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it. It’s a rather complex question, and deserves a rather complex answer. It’s funny because I actually consider myself rather uninspired. The stories I write are about average people doing average things. Well, except for that one I wrote about the war veteran who shot the kids playing in the street in front of his house. I honestly don’t know where I got that one from. But other than that, it doesn’t seem like they would be very interesting to read, seeing as you could just step away from your computer and go do the stuff that’s in them yourself, and still people like it (or so I’ve been told). So, how do I come up with it? It doesn’t seem like it would really be that hard to do does it? It’s not like I’m dreaming up fantasy worlds, I’m taking people in this world in ordinary situations and giving them rather dull lines to say to each other. Well if you think that you’re wrong. What I’m doing is exploring the human circumstance and it is very very difficult. Or it would be if I wasn’t a genius. Here’s how I do it. Seeing as all my writing is based on real life situations, real life is where my inspiration comes from. Actually, not my real life so much as other peoples. None of what I’ve written about has ever happened to me, although some aspects are taken directly from real life. There’s always at least one character who is meant to represent me, or at least contains some aspect of my personality, it helps me connect and write about them better. In most of the stories it’s pretty obvious who I am because there’s only two characters and one of them is a girl, but in a few, such as The Basement, it might be a little trickier. I think I might write a story with a lot of characters and see if you can spot me, a literary Where’s Waldo. Generally I get ideas when I’m not doing anything, or doing something that doesn’t require much thought, such as walking the dog, or lying in bed before I go to sleep. I don’t write them down or anything, they just sort of sit there and I’ll mull them over and gradually they’ll gather substance. This is an ongoing process so generally I’ll have about 3 to 4 going around at different stages of development. Then one will reach a point where I’m really excited about it or it seems to have enough substance to write about and I’ll sit down and write it. Generally it’ll go down on the page all at once, and after a few minor adjustments it’s ready for prime time. And that is how the magic happens.

In case you hadn’t noticed I’m totally out of ideas right now and it’s been over a week since my last update so I needed something and I figured this would do.