How I Write

I love reading books and listening to podcasts about how writers come up with ideas for their writing and what their creative process is like. Even though I have shared pieces of my writing over the years, I realized I have never written a post about my own writing process. So for this week’s blog post, I thought it would be interesting and fun (at least for me!) to share with you about where I get my ideas from and how I shape those ideas into a piece of writing. I will be talking about the times when I write for myself, not when I write for school or work assignments.

For this post, I dug up some old pieces of writing to use as examples. It turned out to be a good opportunity for me to reflect on my own writing process and how it has evolved through the years. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did while writing this. If any of my readers share the same interest and hobby in creative writing, I look forward to hearing from you about your creative process as well!

Where do I get my writing ideas from?

As every book on creativity might say, if we pay attention, we will find inspiration all around us. Depending on our own personalities and interests, our attention may be drawn to different things. For me, I tend to look for meaning and beauty in the mundane. I like writing about simple moments that are often taken for granted.

Sometimes, I get my ideas from seemingly small and insignificant things in my daily life, such as a snippet of conversation overheard on a train, a forgotten glove on the pavement or the way tomato juice flies across the sink as I prepare my dinner. Sometimes, ideas come to me through other people’s art – books, movies, songs, paintings. Other times, I find inspiration from meaningful encounters and events in my life, like traveling to a new place, saying goodbye to someone I love or being vulnerable in front of someone.

Whenever I see, hear or feel something that moves me – either so gently that I could have easily missed it or so forcefully that it stops me in my tracks – I make a mental note. If it’s something that I want to make sure I remember, I will create a note on my phone. The Notes app on my phone has a lot of random notes like this:

How do I shape those ideas into a coherent piece?

After capturing my observations and thoughts before they slip away, the next step is to revisit my notes and spend some time picking each entry like a thread to see how long I can unravel it. By this, I mean exploring the emotions and thoughts that particular moment, scene or words triggered in me. This part is exciting because I am never sure where the thread would lead me.

Some ideas on my Notes have the potential to serve as a concept for a full piece. Some might just be a small detail to be used in a story. Some might be shared as a short Instagram post. Some would become a line in a poem.

Here are two examples.

(1) “16:50 (sunset at the airport)”

This little idea I had on my way back from a business trip became a full piece called “The Hours” where I wrote about specific moments of missing someone in a 24 hour format. Here’s an excerpt from that piece.

16:50 pm

A few yards from the exit, I stopped in my tracks and watched the sun spill liquid gold through tall glass windows. Inside, silhouettes danced on the floor and the walls. Outside, a white plane stood in contrast against the blue, pink and purple hues of the evening sky. The sun was more gentle and calm at this hour; its touch warming rather than burning.  

I thought of sending you a picture. But I knew my phone camera could not capture all the glory and intensity of this moment. It demanded to be felt rather than seen, just like your absence.

(2) “shooting stars in the subway”

I jotted this down when I was on a subway train because the lights on the underground tunnel walls reminded me of shooting stars. I used it for an Instagram post of my “Train Encounters” series where I write about people I meet on trains.

The little girl screamed in delight as the train roared through the underground tunnel. She stood on her knees on the seat, looking out the window into darkness. The darkness is punctuated by white flashes of light like shooting stars in the night sky and she stretched out her hands as if to catch them. If I could, I would have told her that shooting stars are hard to come by and sometimes, it’s okay to wish upon our makeshift stars like these glimmers of light we see during our darkest times.

The above two examples illustrate how a small detail can be built into a bigger piece.

But sometimes, I would start with an abstract idea that needs specific details to take shape. For instance, a few years ago, I had an idea for a series called “What Goodbyes are Made of”. It’s an exploration of different times when I had to say goodbye to someone I care about. I wanted to portray how every goodbye is special, in terms of the dynamics of the characters involved, the setting in which it takes place and the unique mixture of emotions it evokes. When I was writing that series, I had to revisit certain memories to recall the details and explore my abstract idea regarding what goodbyes are made of.

So to recap, there are two basic approaches in how I shape my ideas into a coherent piece: one is to start from a single brushstroke of a small detail and see what kind of bigger picture would emerge and the other is to already have a rough sketch of the big picture and fill in the details later.

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All right. Let me just stop here because I feel like it’s getting pretty long. I hope I haven’t bored anyone to death with this post. I have a lot more that I want to share so if anyone’s interested, I will write a follow-up with Part 2. Let me know! :)