Story Ideas, Thrillers, and Travel
Traveling for Inspiration or Inspired to Travel
I hear many authors talking about the common questions they get asked most often. Where do you get your ideas from?
Having not yet finished a novel, let alone published one, I have only a few ideas; two are book projects in progress. One of the many things I lack is a list, perhaps an ideas factory; I can only imagine how useful that would be.
Disclaimer: I’m not happy at all with this week’s newsletter. For some reason, I’ve struggled to write it. Reading through it, I’m not impressed. But I suppose we all have off days. Hopefully, you won’t feel that you have to unsubscribe or unfollow :-)
Story Begins Here
In my mind, observation is key, married with curiosity. I’ve listened to many author interviews, and a common theme is that they see the world around them differently from the majority. They all have lists of ideas in one form or another; when an odd idea or observation occurs, they note it down. They’re curious, and they ask themselves the question, “What if?”
Say you come across a situation. It doesn't matter what it is, something innocent, perhaps. Then, you ask yourself, “What if?” And potentially, if you were a thriller author, you may think of a worst-case scenario, which could be the germ of a new book idea.
Then, suppose you have a catalog of these ideas and review them occasionally; some will connect. You may have the bones for the next book if you can connect them in a certain way. Unfortunately, I don’t see any shortcuts; building an idea list will take time.
The Future of Thrillers
I heard on a recent Writers, Ink podcast that there's an opinion that thrillers are a dying genre. Thrillers have been popular for the last twenty years since the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in 2003. The genre also had periodic popularity until the end of the Cold War in 1989; think of John le Carré’s spy thrillers. Spy thrillers were old hat; action-adventure thrillers ruled the day after the Da Vinci Code.
But times and fashions change. Today, the most popular genre seems to be romance, and the romantasy sub-genre is the new king of the publication castle. I’ve never read romance, and I likely never will. Of course, I’ve nothing against it; they just don’t interest me.
Maybe thrillers need a new push, something different. Techno-thrillers, perhaps, are what I enjoy, which is probably why I’m writing in the genre. I’ve two techno-thrillers in development. One was started way back in 2017, interrupted by a serious illness, which I've talked about before. It was and is my passion project; it’s still on the back burner, but I’ll get to it soon enough.
Short-Form Travel
We were away this weekend, not for long, just one night. It would have been better to go longer, but a family member is ill, and we didn’t want to leave him for too long. But it was a break that we don't often get, and we made the most of it. You never know.
As I wrote last week, I even came up with some new ideas and inspiration for books or articles. We were in Zeeland, on the west coast of the Netherlands. Look it up on a map. It’s all very civilized today, but it got me thinking about how it would have been an ideal safe haven for pirates a thousand years ago.
I know there were pirates in Friesland at that time. I read The Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell last year, all 13 books, which included several references to Friesian pirates. Zeeland, similarly, was also a collection of many small islands surrounded by sea, a real maze. It would’ve been perfect for privacy in those days, except for the nobility, which firmly controlled the area in the Middle Ages. But as an idea, it’s something to think about.
It occurred to me that creatives find travel interesting and different because it’s a new place with a new face. The rooms might not be any better than the rooms we have at home, and the bathroom might not be any better than the bathroom at home, but that makes all the difference. This is what makes it interesting and, sometimes, inspiring because it’s different.
Short-Form Writing
Way back in February 2023, I joined Medium and started writing on that platform; fortunately, within a month of starting to write, I heard about Substack. At first, this publication was named something odd after my company, and it was mainly focused on business, leadership, and people management.
It quickly pivoted to focus more on creative writing and, still later, combined creative writing with using generative AI to help with the writing process. I could see it was starting to take over this publication, which wasn’t the direction I wanted it to go. So, instead, I started a second publication, Your Creative Edge, to host all things GenAI.
This newsletter is a conversation, even an online (and public) journal. Fortunately, my subscribers seem to find it interesting, and I appreciate each and every one of you. I write from the heart. I write what I want to write, and I enjoy it. Having said that, I’m finding writing more difficult than is normally the case this weekend.
The sun is shining, spring has arrived, and I’m itching to potter around in the garden after a long, cold, wet winter.
Final Thoughts
Another week has passed without being able to complete the second issue of the sister publication (Your Creative Edge), for which I can only apologize. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much energy an older gentleman can generate. Such is life.
As always, the main problem impacting my creative life is the day job. It takes so much energy out of me that my creative tank is often empty and dry. I’ve tried caring less about the work, but that’s not how I’m wired. If I’m going to do a job, I’ll give it my all. Perhaps not the most brilliant move, but it is what it is.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not despondent about any of it. It’s a lovely afternoon, and it’s too good to spend more time in the office. So, until next time, have a great creative week, and take care of yourselves.