Ideas on the art of writing

What's writing for you? Where do you start? How do you know when to stop? What are your biggest inspirations? Where do you get the ideas from? What turns you off when writing? What to do when you suffer from mental constipation?

(Saaaaam! We need your halp! )

Post about this sort of stuff and more in here. Add, also, snippets and fragments related to the art of writing like the following:

Interviewer: How do you describe the perfect state in which you can write from early morning into the afternoon?

One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function–a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind–then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes...and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.

Joyce Carol Oates, Paris Review interview

Writing for me is not an idea, like "hey I should write about a guy losing his mom!" What a jerk I would be to use my character to prove a point, to teach a lesson. Instead, a story starts as a sort of feeling for me; a vague idea of a person, a moment in a life, a smell, a room, anything really. It's always different. If it's compelling, I'll follow it. If not, it'll fade into darkness.

I'm working on the fickle nature of my writing voice. For instance, I've found that music is a good way to induce a mood (plus a little back reading to get into character). I can usually go from apathetic to whatever I need to go to with this methodology.

My purpose in writing isn't publication, and I don't feel that's a reason to be looked down upon. I will of course attempt publication, but the story isn't written to impress some editor or agent. It's written to explore the very deep and twisted reality of my subconscious (don't scoff you all have 'em too -- and they're just as deep and just as twisted whether you know it or not). If the world would benefit from its print, icing on the cake.

I write because a moment compells me to do so, with no other motivation than that. To me, that's the only legitimate way to write honest fiction.

My purpose in writing isn't publication, and I don't feel that's a
reason to be looked down upon. I will of course attempt publication,
but the story isn't written to impress some editor or agent. It's
written to explore the very deep and twisted reality of my subconscious
(don't scoff you all have 'em too -- and they're just as deep and just
as twisted whether you know it or not). If the world would benefit from
its print, icing on the cake.

Ooh, much kudos! Good to see not all authors are validation whores

Where do we get to see your work, or at least snippets of it? That'd be pretty cool

http://apex.darkbb.com/fiction-f4/what-happened-to-the-sky-by-connor-holmes-t38.htm

Here's something just for fun that I was writing in the apex forum.

Instead, a story starts as a sort of feeling for me; a vague idea of a
person, a moment in a life, a smell, a room, anything really. It's
always different. If it's compelling, I'll follow it.

Do you agree that dreams are also a rather creative source of ideas?

I usually have very vivid dreams and remember everything in detail. Sometimes they're just bollocks and some others I wake up with very strong feelings and images in my head. I've recently been tempted to capture the memorable dreams in little stories, maybe even surreal ones.

Did you ever write something inspired by a dream, good or bad?

Absolutely, yes. Quite a few of my stories have been dream inspired.

According to Bob Butler, writing requires a very similar event to dreaming -- you write from your subconscious, where dreams come from. The level of lucidity varies (or rather, the control over events), much like dreaming. The difference is you're sitting at a computer screen rather than in your bed, and you're not likely to fall over and bust your head like if you fell asleep, but wherever it is you go when you write, it certainly isn't the room you're in.