English: Edgar Allan Poe. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We all have demons. We all have things we are fearful of: death, old age, loneliness, poverty…You get the point. We all have nightmare situations that we hope we never have to deal with.
Many writers don’t deal with their demons in their fiction, at least not directly. That’s not their style. That’s not their subject matter.
Part of the genius of Edgar Allan Poe is that he dealt directly with his own deepest fears, knowing he was also dealing with the deepest fears of his readers.
If you do write about your demons, don’t just vomit fear onto the page. You still want to exercise the utmost craft, skill and structure for your genre.
18 Best Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Photo credit: d0.0b)
No one can accuse Edgar Allan Poe of being a sloppy writer.
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Be sure to check the front page for the latest updates. The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is a blog of reporting, writing and brazen sexuality. This is the Old Soldier reporting from Pittsburgh.
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Creative Writing: Staying Inspired
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The Old Soldier has been writing for more than 45 years. How do I stay inspired, especially since I make only a little more than a dollar a day from online writing? Well, I’ll tell you.
When I first started to write seriously I had just come back from Vietnam. Writing was therapy. It was the way that I dealt with my demons; and not just the demons I had from Vietnam but the demons I had left over from growing up in a home where my father was a wife beater.
It was through writing that I was able to control my emotions and to make sense out of the world.
To be truthful with you, that has not changed much.
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Of course, I was also inspired by the authors that I read: Hemingway, John O’Hara, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker…the list goes on and on. And if you are a writer I bet you can find some flash fiction and some articles on this blog that will inspire you, too.
Keep reading and keep writing.
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