David Danforth

Writing

Battling the self-doubts…

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Greetings!

Well, I’m one full week in from my launch of Minutemen:  World When We Live, and so far, it’s been a better launch than my first book in the series.  Things have gone pretty much like I was told through those I’ve learned from–through podcasts and classes.  One great side-effect of launching a book in a series is the uptick of downloads in the previous books in that series.  When I read that might happen, at first I thought, “no way.  The sales of that first book have run their course, haven’t they?”

But this past week, sales for the first book have gone through the roof, approaching 2000 copies, and making Minutemen #1 in its category in Amazon (for a brief time, but still…) and is still having 20 -30 downloads per day.  This is awesome, but ultimately disappointing if no one writes a review after they’ve finished reading, or, perhaps more important, no one says, “Wow!  I need to see how this continues.” And picks up the new book after they finish the first one.  This brings up the subject of my post, because in a couple weeks, I’m going to get a measurement of just how good (or not so good) my writing is.

I get a few comments from folks how lucky I would be if I’m able to turn my writing into something I can do full time–providing enough financial return to support my family.  “Because then you can quit work and just not work for the rest of your life.”

Except that writing is work.  Forget everything else that goes along with this for a moment:  The preparation of ads to promote the book, the scheduling of your book with services like Freebooksy or BookBub to coincide with your book launch, informing your fans the book is out–and before that, going through multiple drafts to edit the book, designing or commissioning a cover–set all that aside for a moment.  The singular act of writing, writing a story or book, is work.  It could drain you.  Daily.

So when all that is done, and you set it out into the world, it’s only natural to think “is it good enough?  Will people enjoy it?”  And then you look at authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, John Grisham, and you think, “well, no way I’m as good as they are.  What the heck am I doing?”

What are you doing?

You’re writing.  You’re working.  And like everyone else, you just want to make sure you’re doing a good job.

Where do you get your ideas?

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Greetings!

I thought I’d kick off the writing tips blog posts with the most basic topic I can think of (and one of the most popular questions I hear as an author):  where you get story ideas from.  Now, for some of you, this is a no-brainer.  You’ve already got this handled.  And to those people, I say, AWESOME!  I promise I’ll get into more detailed subjects as time goes by.

The fact remains, however, that the question of where to get ideas for a short story or novel is one of the most popular I hear at convention panels, on talk shows, and like I said, a lot of people ask me.  It’s like the answer is some big mystery.  It really isn’t.  Allow me to demystify it for you.

Before I go on, I’ll state my usual caveat with writing.  Everyone has a different process.  Everyone.  If you ask one hundred different writers what their writing process is like, you will get one hundred different answers, from beginning to end.  I can just tell you what my writing process is, and in the end–really–it’s what works for you that will make you the best writer you can be.

All right, with that out of the way–story ideas.  Let’s go with the low-hanging fruit first:

  • News, magazine, online articles:  If you haven’t yet warmed up to the idea that you’ll be doing a lot of reading, you better start.  There’s daily bits in the news that make for GREAT story ideas.  Heck, with what’s going on in our American government right now, you can probably find something every hour to write about.

These other two are more general personality traits, but, stay with me here:

  • Be observant:  Always look around and be aware of your surroundings.  You never know what you might see that will spark an idea for a story.  The next novel I’m working on, Lights, came about from something I saw on a BART car (that’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, for those who live outside of the Bay Area).  It wasn’t just what I saw, though, it was the demeanor of my fellow passengers in the car.  It was like we were all sharing this beautiful secret we got to hide from how ugly and cruel the real world can be.  Now, that was the seed of the novel.  That’s how it starts–with the idea.  When you read Lights (hoping to launch at the end of the year) you’ll find little of that initial idea.  That’s because I did the next thing on the list…
  • Always ask, “What if?”:  Ask it, ask it, then ask it again.  Keep asking “what if” and it will lead you to great places and fill out the bones of your novel.  I wrote a short story once, the idea for which I got while waiting for my wife to finish shopping in Hobby Lobby.  I was waiting, hanging around the picture frames aisles, when I noticed a large alcove that, from my view, was completely empty.  That set my mind going:  What if that area was used to sell something not on the floor?  What would that be?  Well, what if it was a place to come and ask for transport to anywhere in the universe?  Who would be the customer?  Not human beings.  What if a human being stumbled on to it?  And so on…

Certainly, there are more resources to get story ideas from, but these are my three, and they’ve served me well for many years.  I hope if you struggle with finding ideas, you can use these and, after a while, finding ideas will be second nature for you.

Until next week!

David.