What nobody tells beginners

I found this quote on facebook, where it's lately been circulating among artistic types. I wish I had read this when I first started writing seriously—it would have helped a lot with the fear of not being good enough. But I think it's relevant for all aspiring author types, so here you go:

Inspiration post

Radiohead. Because their songs always make me want to write really, really sad stories.

Geographical inspiration

When I was younger I was lucky enough to travel each summer to some of the most beautiful national parks in the western United States. I traveled by bus. With about fifty relatives. And my great-uncle Joe was the bus driver. But that's a story for another time. Anyway, clearly all of the amazing landscapes captured my imagination, because they keep popping up in my book:

 The geothermal features of Yellowstone National Park appear in the Silvermarsh Province in Abernwyth. 

The beautiful rock structures of Arches National Park appear as the Archlands in the northern desert province.

And Canyonlands National Park becomes home to an isolated clan of ninja-faeries.

So, what about you—does travel inspire you? Do you get your fictional settings from real places, or places you make up in your head, or both?

Hollywood plots are boring

In the past two weeks I have watched one of the saddest movies I have ever seen:

And one of the happiest:

And I loved them both! They're both titles from my new favorite, Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation film studio.

Now, the fact that I loved two very different films—one is about two war orphans trying to survive a food shortage in Japan, the other is about a magic goldfish—got me thinking. Normally it's a rare event that I truly like a film, let alone love one. So what's different about these two?

The answer is that they tell stories in ways that I'm not used to—they tell stories in a non-Western way. After 25 years of living in the United States and Great Britain, I'm officially burned out on Western storytelling in films. Or more accurately, I'm burned out on American and British films. The predictability. The cliches—the stripper with a heart of gold, the tired old athlete who gives it one more shot, the teacher who inspires inner-city kids, the mismatched couple who hate each other at first but inevitably fall in love—yawn. The same goes for most American sitcoms: gender stereotypes followed by ethnicity stereotypes followed by sexual orientation stereotypes followed by yawn, yawn, yawn. I've seen it all before. I'm bored.

What I like about foreign films is that they tend to tell stories if not in a less formulaic way, then at least with formulas that I'm not familiar with. When I watch these Japanese animated films, I watch them having no idea what is going to happen next. Even Ponyo, which is based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," surprised me with its originality; its utterly unique take on a familiar story. The delight of being surprised, of truly not knowing what will happen next, is what enables me to sit through a film.

I guess that's why I've been finding more and more inspiration in foreign and independent films over the past couple of years. I figure that if I can learn to tell stories in an unexpected, unpredictable way, then they will be more fun to read, and more fun to write as well.

So, what do you think? What makes a story—whether it's a a book, a film, a play, or whatever—interesting for you? What keeps you reading/watching/listening?

Inspiration Post

This post is about the things that are inspiring me as a writer right now. I love Studio Ghibli films for their incredible imagination. I also love magic and the idea of nature spirits, two things that are prevalent in these films. Of course I love Dr. Who, because I really like the idea of time travel, and when combined with space travel it's even better. I put in the Brontë sisters because I'm going through a bit of a Brontë phase at the moment, having just read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I feel inspired by the fact that these authors were able to write such incredible novels with nothing but ink and paper and will. Lastly I've included Mars because I've been wanting to do a story about a Martian colony for a while now. I love its dramatic color in this photo; it reminds me of glowing embers. 

Laputa: Castle in the Sky 

Spirited Away

Howl's Moving Castle

Princess Mononoke

Dr. Who

The Brontës

Planet Mars

So, what about you? Where are you getting your creative inspiration lately?