The Manic Attack

Flying by the seat of my pants these days

Week 25, prompt 7 - "Welcome To My Reality Forum" 

When my muse has fled and I have no more fresh ideas for anything, be it poetry or fiction for a short story or flash fiction, I have many options to choose from for what to do. If I really have the writing bug and want to write no matter what, if it's poetry, I'll look at my surroundings and see if there's something in nature or in real life I can write about. There's definitely always something to write about, it's simply that we as writers have to find what that is in that moment. My haiku poems of course have to be about nature, so I usually go outside in the back yard and sit at the table with the umbrella and have a cigarette and look around me. I'll find inspiration in the hummingbirds that come to our feeder, or our resident blue jay who eats apricots that have fallen from the neighbor's tree into our yard, or the (former) wasp hive growing underneath the table's umbrella (a friend got rid of it thank heavens) or my own dogs, Hogan, Rocky and Gypsy who bark at anything and everything, and who also like to chase Blue, our blue jay. If I'm not writing haiku but need to write some other poem, usually I'll force myself to choose which type of poetry it'll be; traditional (form) or free verse. That'll usually get the wheels turning and then I'll choose a topic to write about, and then it's just about putting my pen to paper and writing the words out (I only ever write poetry by hand; I put it on my laptop after I've handwritten it in my poetry notebook first).

Fiction is another animal. I've generally been writing for contests lately, which I find helps me out a great deal because if there are prompts to follow, that narrows the scope of what I'm going to write. If I'm stuck with no ideas, save for the prompt, I'll think of all my favorite stories and TV shows and movies and reflect on the plots that I liked, and why I liked them. Then I'll take one tiny plot point from here and there, make up a couple of my own to fit that story, and voila! I just have created the backbone to a story. The characters pretty much create themselves when I've come up with my plot, but the names never do. I most often use name generators like Seventh Sanctum if I'm writing fantasy, or name databases if I'm writing a historical piece. Usually finding the right names adds some certain personality traits that I've just created in my head, so it's very important to me to choose the right names. I like Seventh Sanctum because it also creates names for places and organizations and kingdoms, etc. Very cool.

I have two different ways of approaching a story. I've either conceived the idea for the entire story beforehand, mapped it out and got some of the details planned before I start writing. That's what I do when my muse is with me (and she's a Greek goddess-like muse by the way ). When she's not with me, I resort to flying by the seat of my pants and coming up with all the details and plot points of my story on the fly as I write it. That's a little riskier for me because if I don't plan things well, they can go awry very quickly. Sometimes, though, it works like magic and the characters write the story for me; I'm just their channel by which they're telling their tale.

I enjoy writing stories in both formats equally, and I toggle back and forth with each new one I write. I'm curious as to know how others write their fiction. Do you plan it all out ahead of time (like the perfectionists I know you are because I am too) or do you just go with the flow and let the story tell itself?