AMA Question: What Inspired you to Write?

In short, a question, a rock and a scary puppet.

The act of creating something from nothing is so satisfying. Different ideas float around in your imagination; a character, a line of dialogue, a setting, a situation. Eventually two stick together and fit. You build the outline of a puzzle from those pieces and work from there. The little and often rare 'Aha' moments inspire me to continue writing. It's like playing with a box of Lego, or Stickle Bricks as a child.

I don't remember exactly when I first wanted to write, it's just something I've always enjoyed. It's an act of play. The moment I found out books didn't just magically appear, I wanted to be a part of making them. When I was younger, I'd draw stick-man epics across Aisling copybooks. I'm struggling to figure out how it worked now - considering you left a wake of scribbles behind you. I enjoyed the sense of creative flow, which I only get now from writing.

Reading inspired me to write. I love getting lost in a good book, but the first time I could not escape the gravity of a great story, was when I was too terrified to stop reading a Goosebumps. I got a stack of them and settled in beside the radiator and got cracking. One scared me so much, I had to finish it because Slappy the evil marionette puppet needed to die on the page, or I'd never be able to sleep with the lights off. I wanted to write stories to make people feel something beyond their reality. To tell a story and somebody think 'that was something.'

The first time I can remember sitting down to write something with a proper beginning, middle and end came about because I found an odd rock on a dreary beach. I was dawdling behind my parents collecting shells when I came across this vivid black stone that had no place on the local strand. I went straight to the dad to ask what it was, and he gave me the facts. They turned out to be incredibly boring. A better answer, seemed like aliens. A leap for sure, but so is igneous rock formation to a child. So I wrote the story of where the rock came from. That eventually became Somniloquent, which took ten years of meddling with to finish. I wrote romance then to sling my ink and make money to buy edits for the fantasy novel. Right now it sits unedited in my wardrobe with a layer of dust so thick you could use it to count the years passing. The money part never worked out for the romance, but  then I wrote Weep and here I am now. Still haven't gotten back to the fantasy. One day.

I loved English in school. Creative writing in particular. For one short story assignment, I wrote a really risqué piece about a man collecting his mentally unwell mother after she was done for indecent exposure. I think that's the politest way to put it. It wasn't vulgar. Or maybe it was in the same way natural death can seem vulgar or frightening at first. However you look at it, there was a stark contrast between the content of the short story and the colourful classroom setting where it was read.

Ms Heinz was our teacher at the time and I remember her giving back the essays and walking up to my desk saying 'I couldn't put it down… what happens next?'

I don't think she knew how profound that question was; 'what happens next?' A question every storyteller writes for.