How do you use your spare time? Do you… hang with friends and family? Go to the gym? Partake in a hobby or a night class? If you’re like most writers, you probably do all of that, sure, but also plenty of reading, and possibly listening to music, and hopefully going to movies.
This is a post about spare time and how, for writers, even our spare time is often spent thinking about writing, or storing away ideas, tidbits of knowledge, pop culture or inspiration that we’ll eventually write about, someday.
Case in point: if you were to look at the books stacked on my nightstand at this very moment, you might think that a second grader, a cat lady, a political professor and a wannabe filmmaker were having a slumber party.
That’s because I’ve got a few kids books, a book about the near assassination of Ronald Reagan, a Halloween cozy mystery and a collection of Tim Burton interviews stacked there, all with bookmarks halfway through them.
Lend an ear to this week’s playlist and you’ll hear Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Johnny Cash (who I’m just now rediscovering), a groovy new group called the Moon-Rays (awesome Halloween music, btw), Mark Knopfler (after recommending him to a friend) and the first of this year’s new Christmas records.
And my movie ticket stubs are just as schizophrenic; Ides of March, The Thing, Lion King, Real Steel (!), Contagion… whatever. Just give me 90 minutes of flickering lights and fresh Twizzlers and I’m there.
I used to worry that maybe my choices in reading, listening and watching material weren’t quite helping me advance in my literary pursuits. That, somehow, I needed to be reading what I was writing, or reading about writing, and possibly even writing about writing, 24/7/365.
But now I think just the opposite: it’s all up for grabs. I consider everything I watch, listen to or read fair game now.
Then again, I make the right choices: for me. Writing YA is all about the story; the beginning, the middle, the end. The setting, the theme, the mood. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? And why are they at odds?
The books I read, they all tell a good story; so they’re wise choices for me. Children’s books are great because they tell a good story in real-time. They also tend to be broad and help me put my older stories in perspective. Tim Burton? Great storyteller. And mysteries always feature a great “bad guy or gal,” even if you don’t know who it is until the end.
Even the music I choose is full of storytellers. Johnny Cash? Forget about it; he’s as much a writer as a musician. Same with Mark Knopfler, whose last three albums might as well be short story collections as well. And Halloween and Christmas music are full of rich legends and history.
And movies? Movies have always been my go-to source for inspiration because I have no skin in the game. I read a book I’m always wondering who published it, how much it’s sold, is this genre hot or not, who’s the author’s agent, etc.? Those kinds of things are always running in the back of my mind.
But a movie is a story in pictures, and I can just let its details and plot and characters wash over me, leaving an indelible imprint that I’m never quite sure when will surface.
And that’s the beauty of how you spend your spare time as a writer: you’ll never know when it will pop back up and pay off in a new story idea, a great bad guy or an awesome new setting. For instance, I used my love of all things movies in my latest YA supernatural romance, Ushers, Inc.
I use pop references when I’m writing for clients all the time, and those come straight from the “soup” I’m daily stuffing into my “creative blender,” otherwise known as my mind.
It’s this “blender,” I think, that makes us each unique. There is no telling how the music I’ve listened to, the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve watched – to say nothing of my upbringing, my friends, family and life experiences – affects what, how or even when I write. Same goes for you and what you write, even how you write it.
It’s why hundreds of thousands of books can come out every single year and no two be the same. As writes, we might all come equipped with the same “blender”; it’s what we stick into them that counts!
Give it enough quality ingredients, and the blender is always churning up new ideas, combinations of half-thoughts and sudden inspirations that turn into stories, poems, book titles, pages or sometimes just paragraphs or random ideas.
And that’s what’s so great about our spare time. It’s not “reading”; it’s homework. It’s not “listening to music”; it’s research. It’s not “going to the movies”; it’s on the job training.
Now, as the holidays approach and some of the year’s best Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas stories roll back around, it’s a good time to ask: What’s in your blender?
And how will it affect what you put on the page for the rest of the year?
Yours in publishing,
Rusty
This is a post about spare time and how, for writers, even our spare time is often spent thinking about writing, or storing away ideas, tidbits of knowledge, pop culture or inspiration that we’ll eventually write about, someday.
Case in point: if you were to look at the books stacked on my nightstand at this very moment, you might think that a second grader, a cat lady, a political professor and a wannabe filmmaker were having a slumber party.
That’s because I’ve got a few kids books, a book about the near assassination of Ronald Reagan, a Halloween cozy mystery and a collection of Tim Burton interviews stacked there, all with bookmarks halfway through them.
Lend an ear to this week’s playlist and you’ll hear Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Johnny Cash (who I’m just now rediscovering), a groovy new group called the Moon-Rays (awesome Halloween music, btw), Mark Knopfler (after recommending him to a friend) and the first of this year’s new Christmas records.
And my movie ticket stubs are just as schizophrenic; Ides of March, The Thing, Lion King, Real Steel (!), Contagion… whatever. Just give me 90 minutes of flickering lights and fresh Twizzlers and I’m there.
I used to worry that maybe my choices in reading, listening and watching material weren’t quite helping me advance in my literary pursuits. That, somehow, I needed to be reading what I was writing, or reading about writing, and possibly even writing about writing, 24/7/365.
But now I think just the opposite: it’s all up for grabs. I consider everything I watch, listen to or read fair game now.
Then again, I make the right choices: for me. Writing YA is all about the story; the beginning, the middle, the end. The setting, the theme, the mood. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? And why are they at odds?
The books I read, they all tell a good story; so they’re wise choices for me. Children’s books are great because they tell a good story in real-time. They also tend to be broad and help me put my older stories in perspective. Tim Burton? Great storyteller. And mysteries always feature a great “bad guy or gal,” even if you don’t know who it is until the end.
Even the music I choose is full of storytellers. Johnny Cash? Forget about it; he’s as much a writer as a musician. Same with Mark Knopfler, whose last three albums might as well be short story collections as well. And Halloween and Christmas music are full of rich legends and history.
And movies? Movies have always been my go-to source for inspiration because I have no skin in the game. I read a book I’m always wondering who published it, how much it’s sold, is this genre hot or not, who’s the author’s agent, etc.? Those kinds of things are always running in the back of my mind.
But a movie is a story in pictures, and I can just let its details and plot and characters wash over me, leaving an indelible imprint that I’m never quite sure when will surface.
And that’s the beauty of how you spend your spare time as a writer: you’ll never know when it will pop back up and pay off in a new story idea, a great bad guy or an awesome new setting. For instance, I used my love of all things movies in my latest YA supernatural romance, Ushers, Inc.
I use pop references when I’m writing for clients all the time, and those come straight from the “soup” I’m daily stuffing into my “creative blender,” otherwise known as my mind.
It’s this “blender,” I think, that makes us each unique. There is no telling how the music I’ve listened to, the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve watched – to say nothing of my upbringing, my friends, family and life experiences – affects what, how or even when I write. Same goes for you and what you write, even how you write it.
It’s why hundreds of thousands of books can come out every single year and no two be the same. As writes, we might all come equipped with the same “blender”; it’s what we stick into them that counts!
Give it enough quality ingredients, and the blender is always churning up new ideas, combinations of half-thoughts and sudden inspirations that turn into stories, poems, book titles, pages or sometimes just paragraphs or random ideas.
And that’s what’s so great about our spare time. It’s not “reading”; it’s homework. It’s not “listening to music”; it’s research. It’s not “going to the movies”; it’s on the job training.
Now, as the holidays approach and some of the year’s best Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas stories roll back around, it’s a good time to ask: What’s in your blender?
And how will it affect what you put on the page for the rest of the year?
Yours in publishing,
Rusty
1 comments:
I edit my books in my spare time. Also, have a blogging fetish :-D
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