inspiration Archives - Addicted to Writing

Writing Fun and Inspiration Post 3

Posted on September 12, 2013 Written by Pinar Tarhan

I can’t resist saving funny and inspirational writing-related images whenever I run across them, and I love sharing them with you. So let’s have some laughs and smiles:

Much funnier if you have also seen the Friends episode where Ross and Rachel sing “I like big butts and I cannot lie…” to their baby daughter Emma.

This just might be my favorite.

Found this gem via the Facebook page of Page Writing Awards.

I have to admit it’s not exactly writing related. But it’s strangely motivating:)

This is all for today. If you want more funny and inspirational stuff, you can check out the other two posts on the blog:

–-Favorite Cartoons and Images on Writing: The Funny and The Inspiring

–Plain Old Writing Fun: My Favorite Cartoons on Writing

Finding Article Ideas & Writing About Them: 30 Inspiration Tips for Writers

Posted on January 21, 2013 Written by Pinar Tarhan

Writers really need to be a jack of all trades these days since we are expected to be writers, editors, bloggers, platform builders, marketers and so on. We also have to have a million “sellable” ideas and we can’t afford to run out of them. Because all our other skills won’t add up to much if we don’t have any sellable ideas to begin with.

We need them for all types of fiction and non-fiction. We need them for our blogs and other publications. But there are times even the most prolific creators can feel stuck and uninspired or they can get lost in their search for an angle that hasn’t been done way too often.

The list I gathered offers what I do, and should do more of, to find ideas. While I get quite a few intriguing ideas without even trying (when the magical “what if……? “questions seem to come out of nowhere), most of them come through a lot of effort.

1) Go through your old posts on your blog.

What have you covered? What else should you cover? Should you update existing posts? Or are there posts that you need to turn into a series to make your advice more thorough and helpful?

*If you don’t have a blog, you might want to read 6 Reasons Why Every Writer Should Blog.

2) Go through your pitches. Maybe they landed you assignments. Maybe they didn’t. The ones that didn’t might be lying down somewhere forgotten because of the depression mode you got into due to rejection.

Is it possible that you targeted the wrong markets, you just got better at querying in time or you’ve just discovered other markets that could be interested in those ideas?

Recycle, improve upon and use those ideas.

3) Go through your published articles. You probably know more now than you did then. Do you think there could be another slant hidden there somewhere? Can you use the same research to write other articles around the same topic?

4) Study the markets you are interested in, focusing on titles, reading the articles, focusing on the slants/angles. There’s a chance you’ll disagree with some points, and develop an article idea on that. For instance, I came up with my Freelance Switch article How Coffee Shops Can Make the Best Substitute Offices after reading a few articles on the site that covered libraries and co-working spaces. Since I have a couple of favorite coffee shops I switch back and forth (in addition to my home office) where I worked productively, I decided to make a post of it.

5) Study the markets you find interesting, even the ones you think you may not write for. They might inspire you for fiction and slants. You might even think of an idea for them. You never know.

6) Recycling/revamping your ideas lists. You need to check your list of ideas regularly for updates and editing. You may have written about some of them, you might find inspiration while looking at the others. If you have used all of it, go ahead and delete it. Now you’ve updated yourself about some of the things you’ve already covered.

7) Watch TV shows and movies without switching off the writer in you. I’m a sucker for an engaging story, and I am running an entertainment blog, so I am tuning off the productivity tips about watching less TV. Of course keep in mind that I hate reality TV, and I quit or fast-forward a show the moment it stops being interesting.

How do they make good posts, you ask? Below are some articles that were inspired by them:

On story analysis:

– Crying for a Good Story, by PJ Reece (on Good Will Hunting)

– Two New Movies That Demonstrate Story Physics by Larry Brooks (on Lincoln and The Sessions.)

On delicious conflicts:

– Most Enthralling Story Conflicts & Dilemmas: The Ledge – Kill Yourself or Your Loved One Will Be Killed

– Your Daughter’s a Liar or Your Best Friend’s a Pervert: Most Enthralling Story Conflicts 2 – The Hunt

On inspiration:

– The CSI Guide to Finding Your Next Killer Idea – A Guide for Bloggers by Pippa

Having fun analyzing fictional writers:

– Writer Character from 27 Dresses – Getting Involved with Your Source

I have so much fun doing this, I have an entire category dedicated to it.

8) Talk to professionals in different areas that you are interesting in writing about.

9) Make a list of your failures. Some of the most popular posts were born through author mistakes.

10) Make a list of your accomplishments. See what topics you can dig up from there.

11) Go through the “finding ideas” posts on sites you love, bookmark /print out the ones you find useful (that include tips you don’t already put to use or haven’t tried yet.)

Two good examples would be Where Oh Where Are All the Good Article Ideas? from Writing World and 50 Ways for Writers to Find Article Ideas from Susan Jonhston.

12) Find a great “writing headlines” source and think in terms of titles, getting article ideas from them. Try Jon Morrow’s 52 Headline Hacks.

13) Analyze characters from novels you love. Think about them. Maybe they can tell you something. Lots of fun dating article ideas can be born from them, such as:

How Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy Ruined Women Forever

14) Think about the jobs you hated/you loved.

15) Think about your career progress. I realized that for me, a combination of a part-time teaching job and writing worked wonders. You bet I wrote a story about it: One Freelance Writer’s Surprising Strategy for a Revved-Up Career. It was published on Carol Tice’s Make a Living Writing blog.

16) Write about songs. Especially if you’re writing about music, the ideas are endless.

17) Rant.

18) Find things in common between Blockbusters/best-sellers and your writing topic.

19) Never turn off your creativity switch. Even if you are just watching a celebrity interview on YouTube.

20) Collect the best list posts on your chosen subject. Bookmark them, study them. Focus more on the information you haven’t internalized.

21) Gather your ideas in one place and look through them occasionally. Add, subtract, improve. It’s hard to keep track of them all when they are scattered on post-its, notebooks, word files and so on.

22) Cover your favorite resources. I do it often here. It helps me restudy the material, gives me something relevant to write about and helps me share valuable information with readers.

Some of my review posts are:

Resources for Writers & Bloggers:Travel Blogger Academy Review

E-book Review: Crafting Unforgettable Characters by K.M. Weiland

Write Great Fiction Dialogue with Gloria Kempton

23) Cover stuff that inspired you.

Paul Arden’s Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite -The Bedside Book for Creativity, Motivation and Life Management

24) Write case studies.

25) Brainstorm niches, and then brainstorm further from those niches. Here’s a great list from All Freelance Writing to get you started: 101 Niches to Write About.

26) Think in “how (to) ” terms.

It works wonders especially if you back it up with a real life success story.

You might try How I Made 6 Figures as a Freelance Writer in 2011 from Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing.

27) Think about how not to do something. Think about what not to do. Or the reasons why you shouldn’t be doing that. And start taking notes.

28) Gather your favorite resources in a list.

You might want to check out 60 Resources for Freelance Writers by Jennifer Mattern on All Freelance Writing.

29) Share success stories, and it doesn’t have to about writers.

Like I did with How Mads Mikkelsen and Gerard Butler Can Motivate Writers Like Hell: The Ultimate Gerard Butler and Mads Mikkelsen Guide to Freelance Success.

30) Find inspiring, fun and useful templates/how-to (e) books and work your way through them. I really like Steph Auteri’s Freelance Awesome: A Starter Kit and Thursday Bram’s New Ideas on Old Topics. They can be acquired through their sites, and they are free.

Inspiration: Johnny B. Truant’s How To Be Legendary

Posted on November 5, 2012 Written by Pinar Tarhan

Normal? What do you mean normal?

“There are two types of people: those who think they are normal, and those who know there’s no such thing.”

I love this quote, and recently I heard it again from Jeff Daniels’ character in the series Newsroom. I couldn’t get into the show, but I’m happy it reminded me of the quote.

I hate the term normal, because it is relative, invented by societies and cultures, and tons of people just kept trying to match up to it, without even questioning it. And the lot that questions it often gives up without trying enough, or believing that they can change anything.

The most common “normal” seems to be having a good job in a respectable corporation, climbing up the ladder while paying off a mortgage, having 2 kids and making a marriage work. Of course as time passes by, people work more and more, see those kids less, expect more from them (since they will face even a harsher competition for the best corporate jobs), have less fun and the vicious cycle continues. They do treat themselves to expensive stuff and some luxury holidays if they can afford it, without ever being able to appreciate it.

Bleak, right? I never wanted a corporate job. I never wanted a full-time job. I never believed marriage or having kids is a must. You want to get married? Fine. You want to have kids? Fine. But there is nothing wrong with doing things the way you want to.

And because I don’t want these things, I have been considered to be different/quirky/strange/eccentric by my friends and most of my family. They always believed that it is a temporary phase, just like I was expected to stop caring about the music that plays in the background. To get a stable job. To have a panicking biological clock because I’m past 25. What the hell?

I don’t fit in, because I have different dreams and plans. I aim to make it big as a writer, and even if I don’t, I’ll keep working as a writer. I’ll continue freelancing, writing those novels and screenplays, traveling and having the time of my life doing these. Of course this can be a lonely road since people around you either think you are crazy, or appreciate your guts and wish they could join you, but they won’t. It’s safer to stick to “normal” and “expected.”

So you do feel the need to read/meet people who feel the same way about things. People who do their own thing, and lead the life they want to lead. Johnny B. Truant is one of them.

On Johnny

I first came across his writing while reading Copyblogger where he guest-posts, but frankly, I could never really relate until I read his “Why Your Blog Is Going Nowhere (and the Truth about Getting Traffic).” on Jon Morrow’s boostblogtraffic.

Now don’t think that it is going to be the same old post. Just because everybody has discovered the draw of the “how-not-to-succeed/what-you-are-doing-wrong” sort of posts, don’t think his going to be similar. For one, he is blunt and uncensored. He also gives a lot of tough love, taking into consideration that it might just not be applying the wrong strategy, but you might also suck as a writer. Ouch.

But he does give advice that will work (if you apply them) whatever your problems might be. Now, I never let a good post go to waste-meaning I don’t just read and forget about it. I check the links, and see if the author is taking his own advice. I also read the posts the links take me to, because I always end up finding valuable resources and ideas for my writing. There’s also the benefit of reading more, which in turn makes you a more informed, varied and prolific writer.

So I did read the blog post he linked to, the one about how he wrote and published a novel on Kindle in 29 days, and the uncensored one (the other one he linked to,) and I decided, again, that he knew what he was talking about, and that I liked how he was talking about it. So I downloaded his free e-book How To Be Legendary.

HOW TO BE LEGENDARY – Review and Quotes

legendary_cover_3d_small_transparent — Image via johnnybtruant.com.

His analogies about Matrix got to be the second thing I liked about the series, the first one being Keanu Reeves. I might be alone in this, but I wasn’t remotely into the world where Neo wasn’t a slave to- it was just as bleak and lifeless and full of weird characters as the first one he didn’t feel he belonged to.

But the enslaving world in the analogy is the “normal” life as we are expected to live, and the liberating path is the one we choose for ourselves. It might end up being “normal” but it is important that we chose it willingly, and will be happy that we chose it to the last second we have on earth.

It is honest, fun and in-your-face.

“You’ll get old and then you’ll die, so there’s no point in hedging your biggest bets. It’s truly now or never.”

Not only doesn’t he book reinvent the wheel, but he openly admits to it. He admits his own procrastination and the period where he did things for the wrong reasons, and how he made them right.

You aren’t probably going to get any epiphanies reading the book, but it is a great motivator if you are struggling to put in the work for what you want to do, or presenting that work to the outside world. It will also remind you of how legendary people actually got to be legendary, and that not everyone will put in the work they need to.

So the book is helpful, though not everyone might feel that way. It helps, and will help, only if you are ready to get going. Like I completed this post in the midst of a major cold I’m fighting off. And yeah, it is nice to feel on track instead of feeling depressed over the obstacles/excuses (aka the lack of energy/lack of time/lack of inspiration…)

“The ‘I don’t have time’ excuse is the lamest excuse to ever exist. It makes me angry, because it is so fragrantly bullshit.”

Pay extra attention to what he says about trying to make things perfect. You can find the book here.

Plain Old Writing Fun: My Favorite Cartoons on Writing

Posted on July 15, 2012 Written by Pinar Tarhan

There are many writing-related cartoons that make me laugh. And not because they are hilarious or tragicomic, but they also have a level of truth to them – OK, sometimes the truth level is scarily high:))

I hope you can all enjoy the cartoons below. I’m planning to make this list a series, collecting the funny stuff whenever I see it.

Enjoy!