Inspired!

Sometimes, I will be stuck for inspiration for weeks. And sometimes inspiration slaps me in the face at one in the morning so I have to leap out of bed, find my notebook and a pen and scribble down what I hope is coherent by the time the sun rises. If I don't make that leap, I'll probably forget what could potentially be the first two lines for the world's greatest poem, depriving the world of such poetic gold.

Inspiration doesn't have to be present for the writing to happen if it's prose though. With prose, I just need it as a spring board. Then I can develop the idea and roll with it, building on what originally inspired me to create something that is fully fleshed out and not merely based on fleeting feelings.

Poetry is different, I think. A poem without inspiration falls flat, because then it's just a bunch of words with no meaning. I don' think you can force poetry - not to say you can force prose. It's just easier to write prose without having external inspiration. Which isn't the same as having motivation.

I hope I'm making sense...

"The greatest thing...

...you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." (Moulin Rouge!)

I guess it has dawned on me the importance of creating something that has memorable lines. People tend to like things more when they can quote from it, generally. But I suppose when you TRY to make lines memorable, it is much easier to fail. It has to be natural. Flowing. Easy. Not forced.

I totally have my work cut out.

"Truth. Beauty. Freedom. But above all... Love."

Now that was epic!

No, I'm not using my license as a teenager to use colloquial language in today's post. The epic that I'm talking about refers to epic stories, such as The Odyssey and Beowulf. I've been thinking a great deal about epics lately, and have found that the surrounding bubble of information interests me.

Back when The Odyssey and Beowulf were first put together as something to read, "epic" was used only to describe poetry. The Odyssey and Beowulf were (and are still, no matter how prose-y the format can get nowadays) epic poems. Around that time, I suppose, epic poems were all the rage.

Now fast forward about a gazillion years. Nobody writes epic poems any more, and if they do, then no-one's reading them. Which would be a shame, except we have a substitute in the form of high fantasy. You know the sort I'm talking about, books like The Lord of the Rings, The Edge Chronicles and The Name of the Wind (yeah okay, maybe you haven't heard of the last two but hey, I love them so they're getting mentioned). There's also what I like to think of as formula-fantasy, which is the kind of story where the main character finds out they're magically gifted, they thwart evil plots and ride off into the sunset on their white horse with their closest friends.

What's in a name?

I'm going to make sweeping generalisations in this post, so be warned. It's just something that has been bothering me for about, oh I don't know, five years? I'm of course talking about the VERY serious issue of pen names. Or, for those of you who like to sound intelligent (I know I do!), pseudonyms.

Yes, I totally went there. My issue with them is that some people have a natural head start with them, because their parents thought ahead and gave them easy-to-pronounce first names. And although they had less choice about them, they usually have snappy last names to go with their wonderfully simple (but effective) first names. Like Samuel Snow, Marcy Hubbard and Candy Water*. And these are just people I know.

People have been struggling to say my name since I was four. It's the reason why I only go by 'Terri' nowadays as opposed to my full first name. As a girl who has six names (two first, two middle and two last), it's been easy to introduce myself to people: "Hi, my name is really long. It has fifteen syllables in fact". But as an aspiring author, I'm starting to wonder what would be appropriate for my pseudonym.

It would have to be something easy to read, and nothing too restrictive for my readers. Which actually rules out using my real name. Also, it doesn't help that I recently discovered that one of my surnames was my nan's husband's name - the husband who isn't even my grandfather. I should have at least had my nan's maiden name, or my grandpa's surname, or both!

I guess this all means that when the time comes to publish my first book, I'll have a wealth of choices for a pseudonym. And nobody ever said having options was a bad thing.

*names have been parodied because I didn't ask their permission to use their real ones. But my point is still evident.