Tuesday's Writer's Inspiration - The Writer's Mind

When I read this segment of On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner, I laughed. I'll put in just a few of the things he said about the elements that make a writer partway between madness and sanity.
I also had a friend who was a psychologist do a test on me and then analyze it. He came to the conclusion that I was both sane and mad at the same time. We laughed a lot about the results of the test.

So here goes, "The writer's intelligence is partly natural and partly trained composed of several qualities, in normal people are signs of immaturity or incivility." There is a long list of qualities that writers often possess. Now you don't have to have them all but you may recognize a few of them. In the next few weeks I'll try to hit most of them. Hope they make you feel amused and realize you have most or all of them.

"Wit - a tendency to make irreverent connections." Perhaps you have this quality and realize that in your head 2 and 2 do not make 4 but make a variety of scenarios that make your reader want to read more. If one were to take four people and put them together, think of the strange possibilities for a story you could find. Another variation is 1 plus 1 plus one. Imagine the many kinds of triangles you can find.

Stubbornness. How many times do you hear that just won't work but by casting words on paper, you find a way. That scene doesn't work, so you tear it apart and try again. To be a writer you have to be stubborn to the max.

There are many more so until next week think about these qualities and see how many you possess or can train yourself to have so you will delight, horrify, mystify and let your readers see all the facets of human nature no matter what way your stories turn.