Inks Goes Freelance

For a long time this has eluded me. I have come up with a few ideas as to why this is, too.

With regards to writing articles:

A) Lack of experience. No matter how many articles you read about writing articles, or no matter how much advice you are given with regards to writing and finding inspiration for articles, if you don’t have the experience to know what you are looking for, all that information and advice is wasted. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t write these articles. Far from it. In fact, they are extremely helpful when you are ready to write your first article. I just believe that until you’re more experienced in writing and the craft, you will find it difficult to come up with a good idea or subject matter on which to base your article on. So many times, I’ve tried to write articles but until recently, the whole idea has passed me by. It’s taken me 6 years of writing short stories and reviews to finally be able to write better and find marketable ideas for articles.

B) Medication. Believe it or not, some medication especially for mental health problems, block the creative flow preventing you from writing anything, not just articles. Prozac is a well known drug to treat depression and there have been reports to say that some people actually believe this drug improves their writing abilities. I can’t say it does it for me, unfortunately. It doesn’t, however, prevent me from writing. One type of drug did, though and that was the mood stabilizer. This was a terrible drug for an artist to be on. No ideas, interests, inspiration or flow were forthcoming whilst I was on one of these drugs. As the common use is to treat Epilepsy it doesn’t take long to figure how and why. Basically the drug controls the fits associated with Epilepsy thereby preventing the brain from firing a certain amount of electrical pulses. End result: dead brain with no sparks = no inspiration.

C) Passion. No passion or no strong emotions and no article. Some of my better articles have been written because I’ve been angry or frustrated with my own experiences with the writing craft. Ideas for articles come to me thick and fast when I’m highly incensed by something. This has included discrimination in the Erotic genre.

With regards to story/novel writing:

A) Interest in the subject matter. If you have no interest in what you’re writing about it’s going to show up in anything that you produce if you can produce anything with no interest!

B) Inexperience with writing short stories. Get used to writing a certain length of story before tackling a bigger project like a novel. In some cases, it is possible to go right into writing novels with no prior experience but that is more the exception than the rule. Most novelists you will find have several published short stories, articles, reviews or columns to their name. It also helps to establish your reputation as an experienced writer in a chosen field or genre and this way, you can build up a readership and online presence. Readers are more likely to take a chance on you than if you’d just come out of nowhere.

C) Medication (see above.)

D) No experience in a sexual or relationship sense. Yes, you can write about what you don’t know but it’s so much easier to base some of your written work on personal experience. That way you don’t have to rely on researching everything just to pen a 1,000 word story. There will be times when you have to research material for stories or novels; that’s unavoidable. For example, I’m currently writing a short story about Dogging. I have no experience with this act so I have to use the internet to find out more about the act and the unspoken rules between participants. As a general rule don’t write about something unless you either agree with it or are interested in it.


Where to find some ideas or inspiration for writing articles/short stories/novels:


· Articles. Read other writer’s articles and don’t necessarily write about the same subject but look at the points that they may raise in that article. Can you write about that?
· Newspapers. Read letters, articles and reviews for synopsis details or ideas.
· Life. Take your inspiration from life. Eavesdrop on conversations on the tube or bus. People watch. Base your stories on your own personal experiences.
· Books or other short stories. Pinch the synopsis from a book or story that you liked. Don’t copy anything else just the raw basis of the story or plot.
· Message Boards. Read posts from message board members to see what the most popular topics are.
· Spam emails.
· Expand on a writing exercise. I once did an exercise where I had to write with the beginning: I thought it would never end. My story A Strange Dirty Game came from this line though I did change it to fit the story line. It finally ended up as 'Hot Shot', an erotic horror short story. Titles of books, short stories etc. My erotic story, 'Becoming Orgasmic' came from the title of a book of the same name. I even included the book in the story.

How and where does inspiration strike you?

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