Heyo Bookaholics!

Let’s Talk About Ideas… Where Do They Come From?

Last week marked my 15th official Storytime on my blog! Over my journey of developing and writing for the Storytime Wednesday Series, I’ve noticed a deeper connection between myself and my writing as if something within myself opened up and I can now see that deep angsty depth where all the inspiration is drawn from.

In this post, I want to talk about:

• where my writing comes from,
• how I’ve become happier with my writing (and how writing happiness is measured);
• as well as the journey that is writing, and how you can learn from my experience.

As someone who’s first real writing experience was dabbling in fanfiction on Wattpad, this post will not be a ‘writing-comes-from-the-heart’ moment, rather I will be sharing my writing inspiration, my journey to writing happiness, and things that I have learnt about myself from my years of writing things that could maybe provide guidance for your own journeys.

Where Does My Writing Come From?

Let’s not go back into my fanfiction writing days and talk about where my writing comes from at this point in my life, all the writing I do on my blog and in private in hopes that they get finished and then published.

I write from my emotions. When I experience strong, generally dark emotions, I write far better than when I am in an overly happy, distracted mood which just so happens to be my default. The feelings that come with a mood that is dark or overbearing are very, for lack of a better word, sticky. They tack onto my memory and do not leave, so I found that writing drives away these sticky emotions and I do so until I feel something more, a sense of happiness and accomplishment even.

But what if I want to write when I’m not sad?

Writing when I’m not sad never turns out well – or it does – I’m just never happy with it, nor am I as productive; BUT I do come up with some great ideas during these times much like the ones below that I had found written in the notes on my phone:

• “A superhero author!”
• “Alice in Wonderland but Alice in Australia, like dropped through a portal or that hole from China…”
• “A bisexual rebel angel bikie.”
• “Inside out but the protagonist’s feelings are real and follow her around but only she can see them.”
• “A Rapunzel retelling but with twins.”

How amazing do they sound!?

Honestly, right now I just want to write all of those into full-length books to share with you guys! My ideas come from my happy, bubbly and most imaginative moments. In these times I write the epitaphs of the books and leave them for some time to come back to and create a plot to see if they’re fit to be made into a real story.

But every time I get to actually writing seriously it’s in my worst times when I’m feeling a strong dark emotion; these range from feeling like a failure or some deep built up extreme anger that begs to be let out in a rage, and so I rage against my keyboard putting the full force into my writings. These stories almost always speak about deep passions and emotions depending on my ideas and how quickly I recover from the strong emotion. I can write from 500 – 2,000 words in one sitting before my mind becomes clear and starts to wander.

Despite all the talk of dark emotions and sadness I want to address that I have been under a large amount of stress this past year and a half and I have gotten serious with my writing to cope with this. I do write when happy, just not as efficiently.

Happiness In Writing

So if I’m mostly in a dark place when I am writing, how do I find happiness in writing?

Finding happiness in writing is a strange thing because happiness is measured in different ways for different people. I’ll talk about that in the next section, but happiness for me comes from expending all of that angry energy (that I would otherwise use to wreak havoc on anything in my way) on my writing; thus exhausting my mind and body until I can conjure up nothing more, until I can no longer tell myself to keep pushing forward.

My writing happiness really comes when I’m drained from the exhaustion of writing. It’s that feeling of accomplishment. The lack of anger and rage, and sadness and dread.

How Is Writing Happiness Measured?

I touched on this a little bit in the previous point and I feel that it is important to have a measure on your goals or anything you’ve set for yourself to accomplish in life as it will help you in knowing when you’ve achieved the set goal.

I like to measure my goal of happiness in writing with quantitative and qualitative facts such as the below:

• The number of words I have written
• How I’m feeling after I’ve taken a break
  • Do I feel like I’ve written all I can?
  • Can I write more?
• The duration of Time I’ve been writing
• Have I accomplished all the tasks on my to-do list?

What Can You Learn From My Writing Experience?

I believe that the one take away from all of this is to:

• Ensure that you have set yourself some clear goals for your writing,
• You know how to measure said goals, and
• You strive to try and understand the type of person you are as a writer and how writing of any form impacts you.

That’s all for today, I hope you gained something from reading this post; I really enjoyed letting all of this flow from me and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it and even some other important writers advice you may have.

What was the message that you took away from this post? 

Do you have any writing advice for myself or other people? Do tell me down in the comments as I’d love to hear new advice that I can take with me on my journey.

Leave your opinions in the comments or alternatively on my social media channels!
Instagram // Goodreads // Twitter // YouTube

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With Love Bree xx

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© Jasper+Spice 2018. All Rights Reserved. Please do not use without my permission. This post was not sponsored, all photos and graphics are of my own creation.