In Case of Inspiration Emergency: Focus on the Truth

Whether you’re a planner or not, there’s one thing every writer will need as they prepare for NaNoWriMo: inspiration. We’ve challenged some of our favorite authors and the NaNo staff to inspire you by sharing what’s inspired them… and challenging you to prepare a specific jumpstart for your writing:

The Inspirer: Sabaa Tahir, author of An Ember In the Ashes

The Inspiration Sources:

Battlestar Galactica (2004)
"The Drafting of One Art", by Brett Candlish Millier

The Sparrow  by Mary Doria Russell

The Jumpstart: Have your characters tell their most human truths. Perfect later.

Why This Will Inspire You: These creations made me see storytelling in a brand new way: focusing in on human stories, truth-telling, and working painstakingly on your writing.

Battlestar Galactica (2004)

Battlestar Galactica is a military/sci-fi television show that lasted for four seasons that I binge-watched in a couple of months. It was the first time I’d seen a show that so sleekly packaged adventure, science fiction, spirituality, character development, violence, war, and romance.

As a high-concept series with tight plotting, Battlestar Galactica helped me learn that genre-based creations can draw in broad audiences by focusing on and emphasizing the human story.

“The Drafting of One Art”, by Brett Candlish Millier (from The Writer’s Home Companion) 

This book of essays is wonderful and I recommend it to any writer, no matter where you are in the journey. Specifically, though, Millier’s essay on my now-favorite poem, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”, was my first true understanding of what it meant to revise something.

I read the essay in my teens and found myself coming back to it over and over, particularly while writing and revising An Ember in the Ashes (a multi-year process). Though the essay is a bit academic, it’s worth a slow, careful read in December for all the little nuggets about what it means to work on something until it’s as perfect as you can get it. 

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

When I see something in a book that I want to remember, I upturn the bottom corner of the page so I can find it easily. About half the pages in this novel are turned up. 

Though often classified as a science-fiction book, The Sparrow is a genre mash-up—my favorite kind of novel. It touches on questions of morality, faith, philosophy, family and humanity. The novel switches between two time periods, telling the tale of man’s first (and ill-fated) mission to a distant planet, as well as the story of one of the mission’s survivors, a Jesuit priest dealing with a crisis of faith, to say the least.

The characterization is incredible, the world-building top notch; I think any reader will learn a ton about both from this novel. But the main thing I learned from The Sparrow is that a writer’s power lies in truth. That truth can be beautiful, but it’s often harsh and ugly. Telling it means not pulling your punches when it comes to your characters. And as difficult as that can be to write, the effort is worth it.

Sabaa Tahir was born in London but grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s 18-room motel. After graduating from UCLA, Sabaa became an editor on the foreign desk at The Post. Three summers later, she came up with the concept for her debut novel, An Ember in the Ashes. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. You can follow her on Twitter. Her debut novel, An Ember in the Ashes, is out from Razorbill/Penguin on April 28, 2015.