Bill O'Hanlon wrapped up the final day of the WD conference with a very appropriate topic; energizing your writing with your skill and perseverance. He and other authors shared their motivational sources and stressed using your emotional states of Blissed, Blessed, Pissed and/ or Dissed in your writing, to keep yourself going even when it gets tough.
Motivation can come from both negative and positive events in your life. Who would guess that a career as a mystery writer would begin for Sue Grafton, while dreaming up imaginative ways of killing or maiming her soon-to-be ex-husband? If you're angry about a particular condition or a crusader who wants to change the world, like Andrew Vachss in his crime fiction, channel your anger into your writing.
What's your motivation?
3 comments:
That's actually not an easy question to answer. All authors would love their work recognised, but that takes many forms. Do we yearn to have our books made into a series of blockbusting international films, or simply to feel the weight of a brand new, pristine paperback in your hands that sports your own name on the cover? Me? I still get a buzz out of the second one.
Everything, but mostly the darker parts of life. Frustration, resentment, pain, failure, sadness... It all gets wrapped up neatly in a story, disguised of course as someone else's life.
My motivation is escape. Writing offers the prefect escape into the past.
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