You know, it's interesting: you would think that after 15 months of writing about writing, I'd be running dry of things to talk about by now. And it does sometimes feel that way. Sometimes my eye wanders endlessly across a blank page, waiting for the inspiration to strike. Other times it's not so much a case of not finding a subject to write about, but feeling as though you've said everything you already want to say and anything more you add to that is just surplus. It's those days where every single sentence you pen feels painful, and getting even a couple of a hundred words down feels like a mammoth task.
And then there are days where you can't write fast enough for all of the ideas sparking through your brain like a fireworks show. Those glorious days where you could write for hours and not feel drained by it - on the contrary, you feel stimulated by it, and the only thing that stops you is the fact that it's one in the morning and tomorrow is a school day. We'd all like to have more days like the latter and less like the former, wouldn't we? But how? Inspiration seems to strike at random and with no particular pattern: it can happen late over a Friday night after-work drink, while you're at the gym, sleeping, commuting, or just gazing out of the window. Quiet and loud times, day or night, perfect or terrible timing, inspiration is a mistress that taps your shoulder when she is ready, regardless of whether you are or not. Or is it? I believe that inspiration is more like watching wildlife: there's a certain amount of luck, yes, but there's a methodology to maximizing your chances of success. Here, then, are 10 ways to encourage inspiration to strike you at a time you need it, and how to hold onto it. 1. Find your space. Think of all the places you regularly spend time: your desk at work or school, your living room, the garden, the shower, your bed...in which space do you feel most creative, where ideas seem to come thicker and faster than usual? The answer may surprise you, because it may be a place that on the surface doesn't seem like an inspirational place. We balk at the idea that our work desk or the chair at the back of geography class is our place of inspiration! But while there's a multitude of reasons why certain places encourage creativity more than others, one common thread is that it's a place that overlaps with little else in your life. Your inspirational place is rarely the same place you relax, study, or play games. Your chair in the living room where you watch TV, play video games, browse the web and occasionally eat is so tied up with other aspects of life that creativity has no means to cultivate here. It's the reason people have “shower thoughts”, why so many novelists write in their sheds or on long train journeys. It's not the same as a boring, distraction-free environment though. It's about finding a space that you can mentally partition as being the place you write, so whenever you sit yourself at that place your brain begins to associate it with writing. 2. Inspiration isn't a random chance, it is cultivated.“But I don't have a place like that!” you might say, “I don't have a shed, take trains or think of anything in the shower, I'm too busy singing!” But that's the thing: inspiration may seem to be random but that doesn't mean you should just go about your day waiting for it to sneak up on you. You need to cultivate a place within your life where the magic happens. It can be any place, so long as it doesn't cross over too much with an area in your your daily life that your brain associates with other things (for example, you may want to avoid using your bed because it's a place your brain associates with sleep, so if you try and get creative on the mattress don't be surprised if you fall asleep after 10 minutes!). I tend to use my dining table, because it's a place where I eat (not much brainpower associated with that). Was it a particularly inspirational place at first? Hell no - it's a plain table in a cold room - but in time it became the place I'd sit down for an hour each day to create. It doesn't make inspiration happen by default but it did become the place where I'd flesh out my art, and so cultivated the seeds that would attract inspiration to fly my way like bees towards pollen. Now whenever I sit down at the dining table and there's no food there, my brain knows the deal: it's time to open up the valves for creativity - and increasing the likelihood of inspiration hitting me. 3. Look in the small things. Inspiration. It's a big word, and I don't mean that by the number of letters. It's a word that seems to conjure images of the greatest experiences, the deepest emotions, the most spiritual side of our humanity. That’s inspiration, right? Well, yes, but these big events aren't the only ways you can get inspired. You don't have to stand at the top of a mountain or be moved to tears by an orchestra. It can be found in the simplest of things, the small details - even in the mundanity of daily life. Who here loves being tucked indoors, warm and snug, watching rain patter down windowpanes? Or people-watching in the local park on a sunny day? Or - and this is my favourite - going for a midnight stroll? Inspiration lives in all things big and small, and one should never undervalue the inspiration found in the small things and daily experiences. Indeed, big moments of inspiration can be tricky because words can fail to translate it into practical creativity. But inspiration nestled in daily life is more meaningful, more real, and can be more easily captured and used for ideas. Sunsets are nice, but raindrops racing down a window is just that little bit closer to home. 4. Write in white, live in multicolor. While finding your physical and mental space for writing requires some forethought and will differ from person to person, in general when you write you want to be free of distractions. Some prefer absolute silence and solitude for their work, while others prefer a bit of background noise. Nobody wants overt distractions when they're trying to concentrate and be creative. You “write in white”, so to speak. But when you put your pens and pencils down, you must let life in with both arms wide. Go for a walk, meet friends, watch a movie, read a book…”live in multicolor”. It's not just for the sake of having fresh experiences and fodder for ideas, mind: being creative and weaving something practical from the creativity (be it writing fiction, making music, graphic design etc.) is a big drain of brainpower. The trouble with being a creative mind is that even when you step away from your assigned workspace you never 100% switch off. You can't stop ideas from coming to you - on the contrary, the more you live life, the more your creative juices will flow. But it does require a certain amount of discipline, a balance, so you're able to bottle the inspiration that strikes while you're out and about and use it for later while not actively running for a notepad every five seconds. You don't want to feel you live just for the sake of your writing: you'll quickly grow to resent it for invading aspect of your life, and you'll begin introducing aspects of your creative lifestyle into your everyday life - quiet, solitude, constantly needing time and space to think. You will begin fading the many colours of life you desperately need, which will make your writing poorer - you didn't allow your batteries to recharge, and you've been living a reduced life that is starved of experience. So make sure that when you step away from your work that you go out and properly live, not just for replenishing creative juices but to put life in perspective and there's more to it than writing. And when you return to your writing, you will be ready and willing.
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Back in the summer of last year, an anime movie landed in Japanese cinema called ‘Kimi no na wa’, which translates roughly as - and indeed the English title is - ‘Your Name’. Now, the release of this movie was already hotly anticipated - it was the latest work from Makoto Shinkai, who at that point was already a hot name in the world of Japanese entertainment thanks to his previous works, for example ‘Five Centimeters Per Second’ and ‘The Garden of Words’.
But I don’t think anybody could’ve anticipated just how massively ‘Your Name’ blew up. It is now one of the most successful Japanese movies of all time, second only to ‘Spirited Away’. In the Japanese Box Office it has surpassed the first Harry Potter movie and has ‘Frozen’ in its sights. It became No.1 in the Chinese box office - and for a Japanese film to become so popular in China is a big deal. But most incredibly, it made my 62-year-old, kickboxing, stoic as a stone father-in-law cry. And at the time of writing this, ‘Your Name’ is still doing business at the box office, and the records keep falling. Make no mistake, ‘Your Name’ has been a seismic event on the pop-culture landscape of Japan. And yet…while ‘Your Name’ was certainly met with equally rave reviews from the western press, it didn’t seem to transcend into the general public. Oh sure, in dedicated circles of anime fans it has been raved about, but ‘Your Name’ snuck quietly into theatres and then promptly snuck back out again. Compare this to a Ghibli film which sees almost as much fanfare as a Disney movie. What’s going on? Well, a clue is in the last sentence: Ghibli has the heft of Disney behind it, meaning they have the market know-how (and, let’s be frank here, the money), to get the Ghibli movies out to foreign markets and into foreign minds. ‘Your Name’ doesn’t have that kind of backing. But I think there’s something else at play here. Something a little deeper than numbers on a spreadsheet: that of cultural differences. For while I have no doubt that a western audience with little to no knowledge can sit down and enjoy ‘Your Name’ for what it is, it will be missing something. Something that is richly weaved into every frame of the movie: Japanese culture. “Now wait just a second there!” You might say, “Ghibli movies are dripping with references to Japanese culture and folklore, and they do just fine!” And you are correct. Look at ‘Spirited Away’, for example, with the onsen hot springs and Japanese spirits...that movie couldn’t be more Japanese if it tried. But Spirited Away became such an international success because of how it can work on two levels: Someone born and raised in Japan, who has been through the school system, has learned the history, knows the myths and legends of Japan, and is aware of the challenges his or her society face, will view ‘Spirited Away’ in a certain way. When Chihiro’s father talks about the white elephants built during the bubble era of the 80s, then turns into a pig while engorging himself on food. Now, to anyone this is a message about greed, but in Japan it works on another level. Inside the hot spring itself, the uninitiated non-Japanese audience are enthralled by the strangeness of it all, while in Japan there is a social commentary here on the uneasy mix of Japanese culture and the the power of capitalism. That’s the crux of it: Ghibli movies are internationally successful because of the many levels they work on: there’s the universal themes that we can all relate to, then there’s the social commentary of Japan, and then there’s the mystery factor for the uninitiated. Now I’m not saying that ‘Your Name’ doesn’t work on multiple levels: it absolutely does. But it doesn’t wear its commentary on its sleeve: it seems more concerned with telling a cracking good story. And it does so by weaving in nods to Japanese life and culture, but unlike Ghibli which puts fantasy in the front and centre of its story, the world of ‘Your Name’ is modern, and...well, normal. To the uninitiated, ‘Your Name’ seems like a darn good anime movie, but not much more beyond that. And that’s because the culture of Japan isn’t explicitly waving at you from the screen like an exhibit. It’s hidden, weaved into the finer details like the Miyamizu family’s intricate braids. For example, ask any Japanese person who has seen the movie what scene stuck with them, and the vast majority of them will instantly point to the scene where Taki flashbacks through Mitsuha’s life after drinking the ‘Kuchikamikaze’ in the cave. To you and me, that scene is simply a beautiful moment where Taki sees Mitsha being born and growing up. But to the Japanese, this is a pastiche rich with imagery that echoes on their shared experiences and lives. Look out for the moment you see a teardrop hit a map of Japan and the ripples spread out - that moment and indeed that whole disaster very deliberately mirrors the 2011 earthquake. The red thread is also a constant throughout this scene and the whole movie, and while some western viewers may not think twice about it, to the Japanese that red string of fate has long been a part of East Asian legend as tying together two people with a shared destiny. Or how about when Mitsuha cuts her hair, which is seen as a sign of someone who has recently broken up with a boyfriend? Because of these things, ‘Your Name’ draws upon a symbolism that will ring deeper with a viewer who understands these elements than one who doesn’t. For me, this is a reason why ‘Your Name’ struck a chord with Chinese viewers as well, who share a lot of culture with Japan - though they’d never admit to it. While this may all come across a little bit elitist, claiming that certain movies cannot be enjoyed without a proper understanding of where they came from, that is not what I stand by. Quite the opposite: it is a sign of the strength of ‘Your Name’ that those universal themes of destiny, star-crossed lovers, teenage angst, and the juxtaposition of old and new form the beating heart of the story, and will have an impact on anybody regardless of their upbringing. But it is fascinating nonetheless that cultural differences can alter your view on what you see, just as much as personal experiences can. ‘Your Name’ is a fantastic movie no matter what. But the addition of understanding the symbolic elements hewn into the fabric of the movie makes it a much richer experience, and then you see just why this movie has had such an effect on the Japanese population. |
Off the ShelfHere I share my ideas, musings and advice on the writing process. I also analyse some of my own writing for examples to show how I work. ShowcaseHere I will show off of some of my favorite good and great stories, gushing lovingly over why I adore them and why you should too. I will also show you the other side of the spectrum: bad examples of stories and what we can learn from them.
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