Stimulus

Life today is wonderfully varied with different life styles from colorful cosmopolitan to simple and even just survival. To the Science Fiction writer every different person they meet can be transformed into an alien species, their every action can be twisted into weird and wonderful, colorful text. A person's attitude and mannerisms, gestures and personal ways will become the way of a newly invented life form. Every country in the world however big or small can be viewed as a new planet. The culture and politics can be written into an abstract new advanced or old civilization. The writer is the key to the minds and imaginations of the readers and with so much information available on the Internet there is no excuse for not finding the stimulus. The Suite101 pages alone are a goldmine of personal experience and knowledge shared with the world, which an active and inventive minded writer can use to create new and exciting books.

If you want characters look no further than the people you know, work colleagues, family and friends take them and transform them into abstract colorful beings. You know their attitude and personal habits which when explained in detail can be both humorous and often revealing. The writer only has to be both brutal and comical with their use of the written word to bring to life characters which will entertain the reader and also if they were a friend reveal how you see them!

After meeting and talking with so many writers I have come to the conclusion that too many writers take the task of writing far to seriously. They create a black hole in their imagination by a self-inflicted lack of stimulus; they fail to see the imaginary reality necessary to write. The simplest action should create a line, the strangest occurrence a paragraph and the rest is life twisted into text by the mind of the writer.

I would like to share with the readers of this page a chance meeting with a writer who has been working on a project for several years. I had to ask why his book was taking so long to finish. His reply was simple but I believe carries a wonderful message to others, he said 'I write and enjoy writing, the story line flows when I start and the text reads great when I read it back immediately after a writing session but then when I read it back before I start again after sometimes two to three weeks I don't like it and have to change it. Slowly but surly over the years I have written seven chapters and still go back and change chapter one which leads to a whole new problem'. My advice was be happy with the work and look forward not back, after all the editors need the work.

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