I'm going to try and take a new approach to my writing. I have one last shot at it for my Short Fiction workshop, so I think it should prove beneficial.

I've noticed that a lot of ideas I get are situations, static events that certainly hold great dramatic potential, but then I find myself attempting to force my characters to fit that situation. The characters end up becoming plot-driven, vehicles of an idea, rather than letting them drive the plot. Instead, for this final story, I'm going to start with a person, an image or a scene, not knowing where it's going to go or why the person I'm following is so darn intriguing. I'll let the story unfold before my eyes and enjoy the ride, rather than make all the minutiae work for me and cram it awkwardly into my stubborn framework. I'm doing it this way because I noticed that I enjoy my writing and it's at its best when I'm writing in the few exercises in class where we're given a sentence and we take that sentence and run with it. Like at the beginning of last term, we were given the phrase: "Sunburned, yes. But this is 1945." And somehow from that we had to build a world, a voice and a story explaining it, and even under the time constraint of 45 minutes, my writing felt free and unhindered. Last week we were required to write a scene with dialogue, where the characters are physically doing one thing, while they're talking about something else. It took me a little bit of time to start, but as soon as I did and made a choice, it got easier. I think this has something to do with using external stimuli as inspiration. I must constantly remind myself that creativity does not occur in a vacuum, that art is a reaction to the world, and all it takes are the right conditions to foster creativity, and the right element to catalyze the whole process, whatever that may be. A good artist must keep his or her senses open!