  Short Stories
This week: Inspiration and Focus Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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This Issue:
Inspiration and Focus
What inspired you to start writing, anyway? When the river is dry, sometimes you need to run back to the wellspring.
How do you use your influences to create something new? What are the elements that inspired you to begin writing shorts?
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So, I don't know about you, but I've been suffering from a real lack of creative inspiration lately. For longer than I really want to admit, honestly. My real life has gotten unexpectedly busier (in the mostly-not-great ways) and I've had to center a lot of my emotions and imagination on things that don't have anything to do with my writing (or my other creative work, either) and I'm feeling distracted and stressed and looking for ways to get back to the things that I love.
One of my strategies for handling times like these is to retreat back into stories and worlds which have inspired me for some time, or to find new and engaging places that I can travel with my mind's eye, as it were. Sometimes this strategy backfires (revisiting some of the books I really loved as a kid has shown me lots of toxic stuff that I imbibed freely as a young reader...) but it can be helpful to go back to the stories that made you want to tell your own!
In addition to reading favorites from the fiction shelf, of course, it can be helpful to find other types of media--music, television, films--or possibly even just something that might tweak the way you currently see the world. Documentaries? Sure!
One of my favorite things to do is to pick an esoteric topic and become an armchair expert in it! I've done this with a few different things so far; I think my favorite one is gold mining. I feel like this is a good example as it's possible to get very intricate or simply take the broader technical picture as gold mining is a strange smattering of different technologies and scientific expertise all rolled together with some practical engineering and some gut-instinct level stuff that make someone a good gold miner. You could choose to do this with any number of different topics, so pick something off the nonfiction shelf that interests you and see if you can't find some inspiration from it!
If, like me, you're having trouble even putting the pen to the paper, you may want to try lessening the pressure to Create Something Amazing by scratching out some nonsense words before you dig in for the day, or do some other casual venting-type writing. If you want to get fancy with it, you could go all the way for something like Julia Cameron's Morning Pages to get the juices flowing (myself, I find if I try to do Morning Pages, I don't do any other pages, as I'm not a daily writer, I'm a "burst" writer, but I know a lot of folks who love it)!
Do you have any strategies that help you to focus--or do you have some tried and true procrastination methods?  I'm interested to hear what you like to do when the spring is dry! Let me know.
All the best,
Jay
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From my last NL, "Collaborative Writing"
Tornado Dodger  writes:
This is a great editorial topic. I have had some of the most fun ever on Wdc fully engaged with other authors. Some are in campfires and others in a forum setting like in my annual Birthday Masquerade. I couldn't agree more with your assessment - conspire, work together, inspire each other!! Thanks for the great read. :)
Anytime, Brooke! And yes, I completely agree when it comes to creative collaboration! 
Leger~  writes:
Thank you so much for featuring "Breaking and Entering" in your newsletter. As to your question on collaboration, I find it difficult to share my vision with others, mostly because as I write, it changes. Interactives can be very fun, because you go into writing the chapter addition knowing you're setting it free to be interpreted as others choose to see it. In the same way that your addition was probably not what the previous author envisioned. I've found some delightful surprises when I find additions to "Central International Airport" in my inbox. Thanks for the great newsletter.
 I totally agree on Interactives! I keep meaning to set one up but I also keep setting myself too many parameters and I really ought to just let others take the reins and make something interesting out of the idea in my head!
GeminiGem🐾  writes:
Collaboration is an incredibly useful tool. Sometime just a fresh pair of eyes and a small suggestion can make all the difference. I have a contest that I created that requires writers to pair up to write a story. People could come to the contest already paired, or I took individuals and randomly paired them up if they needed partners. I got lots of great feed back on how fun that process was, but one pair ended dropping out due to (shall we say) creative differences. Interestingly, they were a pair that had chosen each other.
Now I'm doing my first collaboration with an illustrator. It is scary and exciting and fun. It is scary that the outcome may influence how well your book ends up doing, but fun and exciting to see your words "come to life".
As an illustrator myself, I can definitely agree that the first steps there are both really challenging, and potentially really rewarding!! I've also commissioned artwork from some other illustrators and been so delighted with their interpretations of my characters.
innerlight  writes:
I found your newsletter very interesting. I'm currently collaborating with someone here on WDC. I love the comradery we have it gets the
creative juices flowing. Thank you for your newsletter I would encourage all of WDC to collaborate either on a poem or short story.
Aw, I definitely agree! Writing.Com is kind of a uniquely useful space for creating collaborations!
Christopher Roy Denton  writes:
Thank you for listing my story as one of your picks. I'm honoured. Bob.
Thank YOU for writing an engaging tale I enjoyed sharing with the Short Stories Newsletter readers, Bob!
Please let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you! Do you have a question about the art and craft of short stories or an inquiry about how short story publication works? Get in touch!
All the best,
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Short Stories: March 01, 2017 Issue [#8157]
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