Perhaps one of my biggest frustrations in life is when people tell me that they cannot write (sounds similar to what other generations think of millennials). Maybe it’s an underlying disappointment that others do not share the same passion that I do, but I try to trust their judgment because I understand that individuals prosper in different areas. There is always a part of me that desires to reach out and convince them that they are just not digging deeply enough into their untapped creativity and potential. In order to spare my pride and ego, I will say that writing does not just come to anyone; it is a specialized craft that certain types of artists pick up more naturally and gracefully than others. However, I do believe that in order to strengthen your journalistic competence, you can modify your means of inspiration and at least work toward developing a foundation.
A common rationale posed for this negative perception of one’s personal writing ability, or lack thereof, is the claim to have chronic writer’s block. Ah yes, writer’s block—an unwelcome foe with whom I am personally greeted with all too often. In fact, it took me a considerable amount of time to come up with this article to begin with. I am a writer, but by no means does that mean I possess a magical superpower allowing me to sit down and instantly bring a groundbreaking idea to written life. Much like other subjects such as mathematics and science, in which these doubtful people most likely excel, writing is a cognitive process that takes patience and sufficient inspiration.
A fear that most writers have, myself included, is that the ideas they fabricate have already been executed before. An important reality that I remind myself is that no ideas are ever 100 percent original—they are essentially crossbreeds of the discovered and the undiscovered. In other words, a recipe for a writing piece often contains a portion of some idea or concept that has been addressed in a previous work, morphed with nuances from the author to make for an authentic end result.
Courtesy: writing.com
Most of my creative ideas do not come to me on a whim. I pull inspiration from virtually all aspects of my surroundings. Though cliché, I am honest and transparent when I say that my primary inspirations lie within my own experiences and the people around me, as well as within other works of art, literature and film. For example, I currently have a short story in the works composed of a main character named Sebastian, who goes by his middle name Leo. Without realizing it at first, I gave this character his name based on characters from two of my favorite movies, La La Land and The Notebook, both played by one of my favorite actors, Ryan Gosling.
When writing for Her Campus or other publications in which I have taken part, I often draw inspiration from reading the works of other similar websites for a potential topic to expand upon. Back in November, I was unsure of what to write about one week, but after scrolling through articles from Time Magazine, the Huffington Post and other Her Campus chapters, I encountered several stories discussing the film Get Out’s nomination as a comedy for the Golden Globes. While I technically borrowed from these articles, I simply took a publicly-known fact and articulated it through an opinion editorial which detailed my own personal views regarding the matter. The point of writing is not always to create completely new ideas, but oftentimes to change the way people interpret pre-existing ones. The same concept applies to photography. Anyone can snap a photograph of the same sunset or beach landscape, but what distinguishes one artist from another is how he or she captures it.
All in all, in order to gain competence as a writer, it is important to pay attention. Pay attention not only to the books you read, movies you watch and art you admire but also to the people you talk to, the people you watch in airports and food courts and to your own personal life experiences. All of this information compiles into a file in your mind, and one day you will subconsciously bring its archives to life, creating something extraordinary.