Where do I get my ideas?
It’s a question often asked to writers all the time, daily, it seems.
Most authors shrug and say they don’t know, others bring out witty comments such as, there is this special club I join that hands out ideas on a month to month basis – it’s an invitation only thing, you understand?
For me and I think I speak for a lot of authors actually on this; my ideas come from the constant question to myself of “what if”? And exaggerating little things you see in your day to day world in order to create an entertaining story.
Little things such as this…
The other day I saw a crane fly lying at the bottom of the bathroom sink with a half sized spider on the top of its back legs trying to tie it up, they were struggling down there and I wanted to wash my hands so I poked them to see if they were still alive and they were – bad idea really!
The crane fly managed to fly when I poked it and the spider was literally riding rodeo on its back for half an hour before it eventually fell off somewhere in the bathroom!
My mind immediately thought of a spider in a cowboy hat and spurs, riding the back of the crane fly trying to tie it down and subdue it as some kind of extreme sport.
Then my mind thought along the lines of “what if”.
What if this wasn’t a spider at all but a person, trying to ride a fantastical giraffe that could fly?
Then my brain thought about what if this fantastical giraffe flew to India and celebrated at a Holi festival?
That’s how it goes for me in any case.
When we found out we got rats in the house because of a baker who lives two doors down keeps tons of flour in their attic and they got in through a hole in our ceiling from the attic to the boiler cupboard; we noticed little things around the house being destroyed and that our kitchen pipe that has direct access to water was gnawed and it caused a flood and other things went on around the house when we had rats… I couldn’t help but fantasize about the life three wild rats that got trapped in a house for the first time ever, keeping a diary about how they are surviving on the bare minimum in a strange environment and one by one they die off.
I didn’t write that story, but it is in the back of my mind tempting me.
Today another idea came to mind, when I noticed a spider frozen in the freezer near the wall of the door, it must have walked in without noticing when we were putting food away the other day!
I couldn’t help but imagine a spider on an arctic exhibition.
I love anthropomorphic stories, always been my favourite type, since I Was a small child. Disney is mostly to blame for it, but the biggest influence I think was the TV series and magazine collection I used to have of The Animals of Farthing Wood!
I like having characters who are stuck in unusual places and situations, things outside their comfort zone, experiencing new types of stimulation etc. because it resonates with me and either fighting for survival or entering a descent into madness or death.
I like to interject comedy into my stories wherever possible and I love playing around with irony.
I get my ideas from my surroundings and being super observant and being an exaggerator within the fiction, a question asker and an out and out weirdo with twisted concepts.
I overheard teenage girls a few years ago walking home from school, talking about animated characters they find attractive, one girl said she has a crush on the Green Giant from the canned sweetcorn advert we have here in the UK and that actually led to several ideas of stories with giants. One of those ideas you know as Steampunk 2.
I tried to imagine why a giant would be green and the mythos of the green man came to my mind amongst other things.
So a real writer never has a lack of ideas, I certainly don’t.
I don’t have writer’s block; I have depression and apathy – that’s the difference.
I haven’t been writing as much as normal because in the past four years apathy has been creeping into more and more of my day to day life and habits and I have been, quite literally losing the will to function bit by bit.
In a lot of ways apathy can be more severe than being suicidal, because it makes you neglect yourself, become careless, unemotional, isolated – you’ve entered a phase of nearly losing your hope and faith that there is anything more than this, why bother? I don’t care anymore, what is the point? Just live for the moment, why plan for the future? That’s not a free spirited ideology that ideology comes from a place of apathy for me.
Because in the past decade any effort of betterment has been destroyed by someone else outside of myself, so… why bother?
Bit by bit my dreams, my hopes have been gradually crushed, all efforts to fight back pick myself up, tarnished by the carelessness and ignorance of other people who are in my life.
Even a simple piece of art that I made, which took six hours to complete over a two day period, will be found a week later, out of the storage place I put it tenderly and on the floor with a tea stain and foot print on it, because someone wanted tape or an eraser from my drawer without permission and couldn’t be bothered to put it back and it got wafted across the room and under a sofa!.
So when I live with people like this, that don’t care despite how sick I am and how suicidal I am, that any effort I make to improve isn’t precious enough for them, why should I care too?
In the past three months I have a good reason not to be suicidal anymore, but the apathy is still there and it is the apathy I am worried about the most, because I am frightened I have forgotten how to feel things anymore.
I am frightened that my numbed state is going to ruin my chance of finally improving myself and actually experiencing love and happiness, finally!
Because I have got used to being dead emotionally!
I don’t want to burden new people with the responsibility of trying to give me back my spark and zest for life, that’s not fair on them!
I still have my story ideas, I do want to write them; it’s not writer’s block for me, I have no trouble thinking up ideas for them, I am just tired of trying anymore, because it’s only going to get ruined again or lost or stolen.
Last autumn a friend gave me some news that someone wanted to steal my idea I was working on if I wasn’t fast enough in finishing it, that literally was the final straw for me.
That was when my apathy hit an apex.
Another spoiler in my life, great!
Just as I was beginning to feel writing was saving my life by giving me something to live for and complete!
It was building up over the last nine years, but last autumn was the crux.
In the past two weeks I have been trying to teach myself how to feel again, how to get out of the state of apathy, so I can get back to working on my novels, instead of poems and art.
I’ve been trying to chant mantras, I have been trying crystal healing – but my crystals feel that I need so much healing that they’re going white and literally cracking apart into little bits and I can’t afford to replace them to continue my much needed healing!
It goes to show how much healing I need when the crystals are responding like that!
I haven’t experienced any change, except that in the past two weeks I am getting by with 3 to 6 hours a night, mostly just 3 hours.
A spirit guide suggested I get a full emersion baptism to help me become reborn and start afresh. It’s a good idea, I’ve never been baptised.
I can be funny and apathetic; don’t think you really know what it means, to be in a state of apathy.
I can know something is funny and speak it, think it, but not feel it for myself. That’s the tragic thing about apathy, oh and I am a good actress!
I can laugh with people when I am really hurting inside, because I was raised to constantly wear a mask, to hide the fact I had such a strange and violent childhood.
I remember actually being sat down and brainwashed into behaving a certain way, so nobody knew what went on behind closed doors.
You can’t ever take me at face value.
It’s ingrained in me, not willingly so either.
My mother was part of a cult, then she joined the J-witnesses, then she became a Christian again, then a radicalist, but always brainwashing me into being whatever she wanted me to be at the time.
My ideas about people in new situations are reflective of my life, I have had to start over my life so many times and each time I was reborn differently.
I went to 14 schools in my lifetime, that’s how many times I was the new girl – mostly home educated though.
I was shipped from relative to family friend a lot of the time, living with them overnight to three months at a time and never warned where I was going, why or for how long.
My life was never predictable.
I’ve had a nervous breakdown at the age of 12 and two more as an adult, I’ve been dissociated and I became so depressed as a teenager and experienced extreme violence and was diagnosed with severe PTSD of such extremes to which my therapist said was usually seen in war veterans! I became a mute for several months, I also became a mute for several months as an adult too, but that second time was due to a severe throat infection that damaged my larynx.
So when I write about descents into madness, or ventures in the unknown a lot of the time, I am writing from experience – though as it is fiction, my stories have exaggerated versions with fantastical twists.
I remember as a teenager being in such a bad emotional state that self-harming was actually a comforter for me, physical pain eased the emotional pain.
I did that in a very unhealthy way.
As I grew older, I learned how to shift that into a healthier and more controlled way.
You can’t get someone as complexed as me unless you’ve experienced similar things – trying to guess my reactions to the world from a normal standpoint it’s null and void and downright stupid; because there is nothing normal about my life and especially my childhood!
Some subjects I write in my fiction may appear too extreme to ever be considered a realistic take on someone’s life, but as I said before, some of those things are taken from personal experience.
No one will ever really know which bits were based on my reality growing up, or what’s been fashioned for the story.
As a writer, your experiences inevitably end up in your work, either consciously or unconsciously.
You can never really hide who you are or the types of people you’ve known, it will always end up in your story somewhere, somehow.
I love writing.
I love making art.
I don’t love spoilers.
They tear my soul to pieces.
So I no longer want to get hurt by writing, or making art, because someone inevitably destroys or steals it and the wound of the past injury bleeds again and gets deeper till my mind shuts down and turns off all pain receptors because it’s gone too far!
The brain does that you know?
When you’ve injured yourself badly, you get to a point of pain where your brain shuts down and you don’t feel the physical pain anymore – well it can do that emotionally too!
It has done that for me, for both physical and emotional.
I’ve walked around with several fractured ribs and a broken leg for months without treatment because of the neglect I experienced for goodness sake, I know it’s true!
But the thing is, until you’ve experienced it for yourself, it’s easy not to believe people like me exist, with people like those in my past!
I’m trying hard to feel again.
In spite of the haters and in spite of the people who are trying to be obstacles in my life.
I have the right to live, to love, to feel and be free and expressive and share my truth, regardless of how you feel about the matter!
Regardless of whether or not you believe it!
I know what I’ve been through, I know the truth, and you don’t know me.
So you have no right to judge until you do!
You have no right to gossip false suppositions and you have no right in keeping me down!
Because when this apathy has blown over eventually, I will be grabbing the world by its balls, make damn sure I’m the better than you haters and trolls and I will have a rollicking good time too!
In spite of you!
Happy 4th of July to my American friends today – you know the importance of liberation too!
Live long and be FREE!
Thank you for reading!
tardycreative.com 