I hear the stories from other writers. There's always going to be one person in the crowd at a con panel who will ask "Where do you get your ideas"? These stories come with a plethora of answers, both serious and funny, but illustrate the point that many wanna-be writers are concentrating so hard on the writing process that they're not writing.
Be honest. How many books on writing have you bought lately? How many college / high school writing classes have you attended? What about writing workshops or writing panels at conventions? And since you started buying the books and attending the classes, how much writing have you actually done?
If the last answer is "not much," then this post is for you. I'm going to walk you through my evolving process in the hopes it gives you someplace to start.
Where do I get my ideas? The smart-alec answer is that I buy them in bulk from Big Lots. The truthful answer is from books, t.v., movies, conversations with my co-workers, overheard conversations at the mall, etc. I get ideas from everywhere, from paying attention to the things going on around me, writing down the interesting bits, copying the interesting internet articles or clipping newspaper / magazine articles. I carry around notepads with which to write down quotes or names or just bizarre little facts. Eventually, one tweaks my interest enough to start writing about it.
Most of my stories start with one of three things: a situational prompt, a character name, or a story title. The rest of the story evolves from there.
When I have an idea, I start free-form writing. I banter ideas back and forth with myself in a Word document, which I save in a folder named with the primary thought behind the story. Feast of the Torn, my biblical horror story, got saved in a folder named Biblical Horror. Circle of Fire has its place of honor in a folder called COF. Short stories go into story-named folders under a parent Short Stories folder while novels get their own folder in my documents file. This is how I organize stuff.
Back to the story. When I first start working on a piece, my mission is to write 300-500 words a day. This gets most of the crap out of the way and helps me find a place to start. Those words can be anything from character development to plot outline to an actual start of a story. Sometimes I don't even start the story at the beginning. I've written middle-story scenes because they are so strong in my head, I need to write them down before I forget them. Usually after a few days, my word count geometrically increases. Silk & Steam had 6 false starts before I found my rhythm, but 4 of those scenes ended up incorporated later in the story instead of as the beginning of the piece.
Every day, I open my last story, save it with today's date on it (so I can track the versions), and start working. Anything I cut out wholesale gets put into a Scene Cuts document so I don't have to remember what date I cut what. I also note each cut scene with where it originally came from so I can go back and salvage the scene if I later want to put a version of it (or just a sentence of it) back into the main story.
When I work with media tie-in or work-for-hire pieces, I need to come up with the plot outline first. Usually because the editor wants to know what the heck I'm going to write. I hate proposals and outlines. I'm not very good at writing them. But experience has taught me to work on those skills and I've actually sold pieces on spec.
When working on my own pieces, I don't tend to use but the most high level outlines. "Jack is going to up a hill, break his crown, and come tumbling down." Everything between that is organically written. And if I decide to ignore my own outline, I'm allowed. It's my work. But when I'm working on spec, I have to at least go by what I promised the editor. They have certain expectations, after all, and if I don't fulfill them, they'll hire someone else. So, in those cases, while I can be organic to some extent, I also have to find ways to fit the story into the structure I originally offered them.
I always edit while writing. I catch myself looking up words on Dictionary.com (my best friend) or doing research when I come across a concept I can't quite remember the details of. It's easy to get distracted by things like that, so I try to do research before I start writing, or make notes to myself to look it up later. Laura Mixon has a fantastic lecture on the Beast verses the Editor. She no longer teaches at Viable Paradise, but she may present at conventions or other workshops. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak, go take notes. Her insight on this excuse for writer's block is absolutely amazing.
But the important part of my process is that no matter what I'm doing, I'm making my fingers type. I'm writing out questions, answering them, adding details, coming up with character names and motivations, or working on appropriate story titles. The point is, regardless of all else, even when an idea is falling flat, I'm writing.
If you need a place to start, here's a prompt for you: Sit in a Starbucks or a bookstore cafe and listen to the loud conversations around you (the ones easiest to eavesdrop on). Pick one line out of that conversation and write it down. That is your starting line for the story. Don't rewrite the entire conversation. Just take that one line and take it completely out of context. Make it a joke, or a horror story. Make it an inspirational piece about a superhero or a down-on-his-luck underdog character. Do something with it that it is not.
And if you can't hear something inspiring in that conversation, do what I did when I was given this assignment back in college. Make something up. You're a writer, right? Making stuff up is what we writers do.
