Getting Inspired at 3 in the Morning

Mark Twain said, "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." I would like to propose a more particularly literary corollary to this excellent proverb: The best writing makes you want to participate in it by creating something yourself. For the writers among you, don't you love that feeling when you read a story or book or poem, and you put it down and all you want to do is write something yourself? For Whom the Bell Tolls affected me that way so powerfully that it induced me to re-emerge from a years-long writing hiatus and once again take up the pen.

I was recently perusing Web del Sol's own 3:AM Magazine when I felt once again the thrill of inspiration that comes from reading a good piece of writing. The flash fiction piece "I Am Running Out of Ways to Make You Love Me," by Elizabeth Ellen, made me want to sit right down and pop out my own flash fiction. (I didn't do it, for various reasons, all of them hopefully good ones, but that's another blog post.)

Specifically, the story made me think, "Why isn't more of my writing sexy?" Ellen's piece is sexy, although not pruriently so; it's just about the complicated interweavings of sex, love, and loneliness in a relationship (and potentially outside of it). I immediately fell in love with the story's first-person narrative voice:

I’d never taken nude photos of myself before. I wrote this on the palm of my hand so I’d remember to tell you: I’ve never taken nude photos of myself before. I wanted to make sure you appreciated the gesture. I was trying to make you love me anyway I could. I had a feeling I wasn’t doing so well anymore. I thought about how effortless it had been in the beginning:
1. eat a bag of peanut M&M’s
2. brush hair

Compelling, emotional, nonchalant, and realistic, all at the same time, all without veering into mawkishness, cynicism, obscurantism, or any of the other pitfalls awaiting those who write flash fiction, or who write about relationships, or who write about sex. So do yourself a favor and read some good fiction that will make you want to write, or paint, or sing, or maybe take naked pictures of yourself.