Finding inspiration as a writer can be a challenge. Especially as a writer of horror, smack in the middle of such horrible times. For those of you who are reading this in a normal era of human history, we envy you. Because right now it’s late 2020, and everything is hilariously fucked.
So, what do you write about that’s scarier than what’s going on outside of everyone’s front doors right now? Does it need to be scarier? Should it be? Can it be? Do people even want scary as much as they used to? Haven’t they already had enough?
These are all very valid and very fair questions to be asking. And my short answer to all of the above is . . .
“Hell, if I know.”
But, however demoralizing as these times may be, I’m going to talk through all of it. Here’s how I see it.
You say you want to be inspired but what are you really looking for
From my experience, inspiration doesn’t come easily to those whose primary concern is finding it. Rather, being inspired to write needs to be something you’re open to at all times.
Consider our single friends—many are looking to find love someday. But you don’t go around talking to every member of whatever sex you’re attracted to all day long and interrogating them to find out if you love them and they love you. At least, I don’t think that’s how it works nowadays. Truth be told, I don’t even remember what the inside of a club looks like anymore so, I’m making a few assumptions here.
Image Source: The Big Smoke “Reflections on the realisation you’re too old for the club scene”
My point is, most of us keep our hearts open and let love find us. The chances are in our favor and eventually it just kind of shows up.
Inspiration works in a similar fashion and it very rarely arrives in the form you thought you were looking for in the first place. So, what are you really looking for? Inspiration, at least to an author, is ultimately a really early vision of an eventual result—a fledgling entrepreneur finally settling on a pie in the sky idea for a business model.
That’s really about the half of it. Inspiration is great and all, but it doesn’t write novels. Love is a great thing as well, but it doesn’t necessarily sustain marriages. You can be the most inspired person in human history and still not manage to accomplish a dammed thing. The work remains to be done and within that effort is where the real value starts to show up.
My advice is, know what you’re really looking for. Don’t let your wait for inspiration keep you from doing the work. You didn’t let not having a spouse in your single days keep you from taking pride in your career path. So, don’t allow a lack of inspiration to keep you from writing.
These times do legitimately make it hard to write
At least twenty times I’ve sat down at my keyboard over the last nine months and found myself barely able to get a paragraph typed out before finding my head filled with thoughts of the days worries or politics. When one attempts to write, in my case horror, they must put themself into a mental state that allows for that type of writing. The problem is, we’re now all living in that mental state at all times. Horror relies upon the content you’re putting down on paper being a departure from the reader’s reality. Readers of horror want to read stuff that’s scarier than their real lives. Currently however, our real lives aren’t that less scary than anything we’re reading or writing. And I am finding that to be muddying up my inspirational waters fairly significantly.
Nothing is terribly easy when it comes to writing in the first place, even under ideal circumstances. It’s already a labor of love, at best, on its best days. If every time a ready-made excuse came along and all of us writers latched onto it, literally nothing would ever be written. Times that are ideal for writing, especially for indie authors, are rare. Most of our effort and progress is made while writing in times of suboptimal convenience and inspiration. But we do it anyway because we love doing it and because we feel like it’s something we are supposed to be doing with our limited time. It’s a compulsion that’s stronger than anything going on outside of our homes. We are going to keep producing it and the world is going to keep on getting it, ready or not.
The Canterbury Tales were written as the tail-end of The Black Death ravaged Europe. So, Chaucer certainly didn’t let the times he lived in hold back his literary talents. Boccaccio went so far as to document, in incredibly vivid fashion, his experiences during the same plague in his: The Decameron. Both writers were highly likely inspired by Dante who came a generation before them and is remembered largely for his Divine Comedy. While it is debatable as to whether or not Dante lived through any of the plague as his next-generation brethren surely did, he no doubt lived through less than ideal times of his own. All the while, instead of using it as an excuse not to write, he poured it into his work and, as a result, brought the world a vivid, unmerciful portrait of Hell, unmatched by any writer to this day.
Shakespeare managed to crank out three of his greatest tragedies (King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra) as The Black Plague descended upon London. Hemingway, no doubt drew upon his experiences during the Spanish Flu to inspire some of his work. Lovecraft wrote some of his greatest works, seemingly all the while ignoring the Spanish Flu outbreak that ravaged his native Providence.
My point is, we aren’t the first generation of authors to struggle through difficult times. There’s a lot to be learned from those who came before us and managed not only to hold the line during their own tribulations but produce some of the most inspirational and timeless literature the world will ever know. Considering all of their accomplishments, surely, I should be able to crank out another novel about people being eaten by ghosts in the woods, no matter what’s going on in the world.
So, what SPECIFICALLY inspires Ty Tracey?
I have a great appreciation for those who have come before me in the horror writing space. The classics—Mary Shelley, H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, etc. They paved the way for all of us and obviously occupy a huge place in my heart and still inspire and influence every paragraph of my work. I actually put Stephen King in the same category as those all-time greats. You can put horror aside and look at how much he has personally contributed to our popular culture as a whole over the last fifty years, there simply aren’t very many, if any, others who can demonstrate that level of volume while maintaining such consistent excellence.
I wish I were as talented as Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling. Being able to develop characters like Rowling—so thorough and vivid and cerebral that you’re moved to tears as your heart pleads for their success throughout every precarious step of their journey. Or being able to conjure entire universes of fantasy like Gaiman—bringing them to life for all of us as though we’re reading a children’s fairy tale, wrapped in a jovial yet violent darkness.
Much of my motivation comes out of my reading of such great work. I know I’m not going to write like any of the greats. I don’t attempt to write like any of them nearly as much as I strive to write like all of them. I’m inspired to make my own name, incorporating everything I love from their work into my own. Every author is a melting pot—inspired by those they’ve read previously.
Weird things also inspire me, mainly in a mechanical fashion that I like to leverage at the time of early plot definition within my stories. It’s rare for anything odd and unexplained to make its way through a news cycle without me taking notice of it. Nearly without fail, such things eventually become explained but it’s that time between their discovery and eventual explanation when I draw my greatest inspiration. In those times, anything could be possible.
As an example, I have recently been following a story about a massive, metallic monolith that was discovered in the middle-of-nowhere in the Utah desert. Nobody knows where it came from or how it got to where they found it—embedded into the earth, sticking perfectly straight up from the ground, nearly fifteen feet tall.
Now, I am also not a lunatic—there’s obviously some sort of rational explanation for it—the preferred theory, as of this morning, is that it’s some sort of work of art left there by an artist who had obviously watched 2001 A Space Odyssey about a thousand times too many. But, until that’s proven to be the case and no longer just speculation, my mind will continue to wander toward aliens or interdimensional beings or a species of humans predating our own who left it there for us to find and use to unlock their secrets.
I draw a lot of inspiration from such things. The fear of the unknown is powerful and makes for great storytelling.
The fear of the unknown
There’s a lot of fear and unknown out there right now. A lot of folks are dealing with entirely too much of it. And on top of that, many are dealing with the loss of a loved one, or a job, or their livelihood, or some wretched combination of some or all of the above.
We’re stuck inside, fearful of a virus that’s burning through our communities. All the while we’re struggling to morn losses because the normal conventions that allow for us to do so aren’t available or practical right now. We’re holding onto so much more, within ourselves, than has ever been previously asked of us to bear.
But, if you’re reading this, you’ve survived at least nine months into this pandemic. You’ve proven capable of making it through what is likely to be the most difficult period of your lives. With a little more heart and a little more effort and a little more responsibility, we’ll all come through on the other side. And, we’ll come through together, riding the inspiration of those who have negotiated tough times before us. We will have gained perspective and new foundations within our character, personally and collectively, that would’ve never been possible without having endured so much. Our lives will carry on within a newfound, non-monetary richness and appreciation for everything we have around us.
Stick with what’s gotten you here. Finish this, and we’ll all discover a world far better than the one we’ve known in 2020. There is no better inspiration to be found than that which arises from the sum of your experiences.