Kate Hawkins - Guest Blogger - What Inspires My Writing

GUEST BLOGGER - KATE HAWKINS

 

A few weeks back I asked for some people to do a guest blog post. Here's the first one from an aspiring writer, Kate Hawkins. She's written about what inspires her writing. You can find her blog here, where she writes about the trials of writing Young Adult Fantasy novels. Here's a short bio from Kate herself:

  

"My name is Kate, and I live in north Texas. I am a proud member of Upward Bound, a program under the TRiO banner that helps low-income or first generation college students find scholarships, as well as teaches them how to apply and find financial aid for college. They also give tutorials, teach resume writing, and offer two waivers for each SAT/ACT test.
  

I intend to attend the University of Houston, majoring in their Digital Media program, which encompasses animation, photography, and several other things. Using that degree, I hope to animate things for Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks and write part-time. My first choice was to move to Japan and animate for Bones, but, it was brought to my attention by a member of the dollars-bbs.org forum that the company would hire someone inside the country with more experience. 

 

I love to watch anime, hence me wanting to work for Bones. I also love to write. In addition to writing, I love reading. My favorite author is Darren Shan (darrenshan.com) and my favorite series by him is City of Trilogy."

 

What Inspires my Writing
Kate Hawkins

Authors get a lot of questions about writing every day. One of the most commonly asked is probably “What inspires your writing?” In reality, there are a lot of things that inspire an author’s writing. It could be anything from something that was aired on the news to an episode of Long Island Medium to something that happened in their day. I think what they really want to know is how to develop the ideas into decent plots.

For me, it’s easiest to jot down what first gave me the ideas. I’ll use the example of one of my works. The original idea came from a D&D session with a few friends. I’d created a clan with supernatural abilities by that time, and I wanted to use those characters for a story. For inspiration, I began reading fanfiction for various series. Many stories later, I’d compiled enough material to begin writing, even if I still needed a main plot; that would come later. Now again, the inspiration for writing comes from anywhere; I just read the fanfiction because I was actively looking for ideas rather than letting ideas come to me.

So, I began jotting down short, vague notes of what I wanted to put into the story. Once I had that, I developed those notes further, and I solidified them so that they made a good base for the start of the story. By then, I’d gotten short scenes and characters developing in my head, which is generally how my stories begin, even if some of the material is for much later in the story. After all of that had run through my head, it was like a puzzle; I had to figure out how to fit the pieces together.

 Your puzzle may be a bit different than mine. It might be a lot harder to fit together than what mine are, and other puzzles could be a hundred times easier. Still, a puzzle is a puzzle, and it’ll fit together one way or another. You’ve just got to figure out the perfect way to turn and flip the pieces, and eventually you get a beautiful image.

To write a guest blogger piece yourself, check out this post or email Joey at bugbooks@virginmedia.com