A few days ago, starting my day with yoga as I often do, I suddenly had several ideas about new ways to approach a couple of my writing projects. I’d had several low days, melancholic, thinking about the state of the world and all the negativity of it, as well as my own struggles with missing seeing family members, and just plugging along with writing.
However, the excitement of inspiration lifted me off
the yoga mat and to my handwritten notebook. I wrote for a while before going
back to the yoga. This kind of thing doesn’t happen all that often. I write
whether I’m inspired or not, that’s what writer do. The work comes from being
disciplined and writing, writing, writing, and then revising, revising,
revising.
But I do live for those moments of pure inspiration
when ideas jump into my head as fast as I can scribble them down and I’m high
on the excitement, the sheer exhilaration that such a thing has happened again.
I hope some day to write a magical book or story.
Oh, I’m quite happy with a lot of what I’ve written,
but I’m also constantly trying to get better, to improve my plots, conflict,
character, etc. etc. Learning doesn’t have to end, and that’s a good thing.
There’s always a great deal of satisfaction for me in
finishing a writing project, having a short story accepted in a magazine, or
getting a book published, doing a reading, having someone tell me they’ve
enjoyed a book or story of mine.
I think that most writers have many reasons for
writing. I’ve heard some say, “It’s the only thing I know how to do.” Others say
that they began writing as a way to make a living, and it continues to be one
of their motivations. I can definitely say that this is not one of mine. I’ve
always had to work at other jobs and do my writing in whatever time I could
carve out of the rest of my life. I’ve never made much money writing.
A press release from The Writers’ Union of Canada in
October 2018 states:
“The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) today
released the results of its 2018 income survey report. Entitled Diminishing Returns:
Creative Culture at Risk, the report documents a 27% decrease in
writing income over the past three years and a 78% decrease over the last
twenty years (taking inflation into account). Despite book publishing being a
nearly $2 billion industry in Canada, it is now almost impossible for
professional writers to make a living solely from their writing.”
From the report itself: “Taking inflation into account, writers are making 78% less
than they were making in 1998. In fact, writers are making significantly less
from their writing than they did just three years ago: $9,380 in 2017 vs.
$12,879 in 2014. That’s a 27% drop over a short period — the same period that
has seen a massive increase in uncompensated educational copying. At the same
time, 30% of writers say they must do more to earn a living than they did three
years ago.”
So, certainly
I’ve not been alone in not making a living from my writing. And with the
changes wrought by the Covid 19 Pandemic, things could be a lot worse for
writers.
But I love creation,
finding stories and characters, and following them, hoping for that magic, that
inspiration to hit, the pleasure gained from making a book.
At times, my
inspiration appears mysterious. It may come out of a mishmash of chaos – a late
night, disrupted sleep, strange dreams, too much chocolate, reading magical
books.
Other times I
know exactly what inspired a story or collection of them. In the case of my
short story collection ‘The Other Place,’ all of the
stories, which are linked, are based on my family’s experiences coming to
Saskatchewan from Germany in the 1950’s. I took particular incidents and
embellished them to try to get at the truth of them, the underlying emotions,
motivations, and so on.
Or stories can come unbidden and I may or may not know
exactly what inspired them – a dream, sitting by a window listening to snow
melt off a roof, an actual incident, a song, an object.
Stories don’t always work. I’m sure that I’m not alone
among writers in having reams of stuff in various files that so far hasn’t made
it to any kind of publication. Some of it may never reach that stage.
I have a thick file of stuff for a fantasy series
about sea people that I still hope will jell is some way so that it can make
its way out of the filing cabinet or off the computer, and go out into the
world.
I have all kinds of scraps of ideas, bits and pieces,
chunks of writing. I have titles, and plans for some of them.
And one day, perhaps the write/right concatenation of
events and mixings will occur, and inspiration will strike for one of those
undeveloped pieces.
It’s what I live for!
