April 2023 - Stacy Lyn Jensen

Writing Inspiration: The Backrooms

This is the third time I’ve posted about writing inspiration. The first two times I talked about how folklore is inspirational to my own writing, and then I wrote about why you may want to look for things that are inspirational for your writing, and times when it’s not a great idea. But for post number three, I would like to talk about a particular piece of folklore that I find bizarre, strange, and something that provides me with writing inspiration.

The Backrooms

The backrooms started as a simple comment on 4chan. The idea is that a person can accidentally ‘noclip’ out of reality. The person then falls into the backrooms. The original comment about the rooms: “If you’re not careful and you noclip^[a] out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Backrooms)

indigo abstract painting — Photo by Artem Podrez on Pexels.com

There are a lot of pieces of media about The Backrooms. I find the idea fascinating (obviously, I am not alone). Thinking about a place that is maybe another dimension. But it’s full of empty spaces, ones that are supposed to be filled. The horror of the idea comes from the wrong-ness. Think about walking into your office one day and it’s empty. No people, no office equipment. Just you and the lights buzzing above you, and you can’t find your way out.

They say that the game Control was inspired by The Backrooms. Which I can see. Although, I think the spaces in the game are more haunted or infected rather than empty.

I think that falling into a separate dimension. One that appears empty, but has monsters lurking. It is fascinating, frightening, and ripe for story. The videos that you can find on YouTube all show people fall into The Backrooms. They then wander around as if they are okay with the situation. If I fell into an alternate dimension that was full of empty offices, I would be the opposite of okay.

I wouldn’t wander around until something ate me. But, that’s where good plot lies, it’s in those bad decisions. I think, that if I fell into another dimension. I would scream. And yell. I would ask for help. I wouldn’t wander around unless a lot of time passed. And I was hungry.

Writing Inspiration

There are a million different stories here. There is even a genre. Portal jumping, it’s called, when a person from one place lands in another. The portal that people fall into is malevolent. It wants to kill the people who fall into the world. The only thing that inhabits The Backrooms is a monster.

On my last post, I talked about making a list of things that inspire you. On my list would be The Backrooms. I will go back to it, when I am done with my current project. I’ll think about what I can pull from the idea of The Backrooms, how it can inspire my writing.

Thank you for reading, and please let me know if you would like to know about other pieces of folklore or other things that are writing inspiration to me.

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Inspiration Part 2

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In my last post, I talked about how I was going to talk about things that inspire me. I feel like it’s a little disingenuous to talk about those things without first talking about why it’s okay to find inspiration or look for inspiration, as long as you have your writing habit.

waterdrops on purple background — Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

First, let’s talk about times when waiting for inspiration may not be a good idea.

You have a deadline approaching.
You are in the middle of a piece of writing.
You are collaborating, and your writing partner(s) need you to write your part, so they can write their part.
Your editor/agent/publisher is waiting on your writing.

Essentially, when you have a piece that you are actively working on, you have a deadline, or you have someone that is waiting on you. You need to write, not wait for the inspiration to strike for the perfect piece of writing.

So it’s important to make sure that you have a writing habit when you have deadlines or when other people are counting on you. Because you can’t just sit around and hope to come across something that will inspire your best work in these cases. It’s always good to have the habit ingrained so that when you come to the point where you have to do it, you are already doing it anyway, so you don’t feel like it’s a huge deal to sit down and do it.

When is it okay to wait for inspiration?

You are in between projects.
You don’t have deadlines.
No one is waiting for you to write your piece.
You aren’t in the middle of anything.

In my opinion, if you just finished a draft, or you just turned something in. Go ahead and give yourself some time. Take a break. Inspiration should be something that you are constantly gathering while you are working on anything, at any time.

Tuck that inspiration away. Make a list on something. Say a movie had a great world, but it didn’t dive into an aspect, you want to know more. That’s inspiration. Write down the name of the movie. But, do NOT start a new project. Finish your current project, write to the end. Then, when you are done, go back to your list of inspirational things, and see what feels the best, what feels like the story you want to write?

If you have a list, you can go back to all the things that were inspiring to you, and you can watch them, or read them again, or look at them or whatever, and they can inspire you all over again. It’s important to allow everyday life to be inspiring, and to remember what is inspiring. But it is also important not to just sit and wait, to keep your writing habit and write every day.

So, in conclusion, it’s okay to look for inspiration when you don’t have a writing project. But it isn’t a good idea to wait around for inspiration when you have a deadline and others waiting on you. It is also very important to keep your writing habit and to write every day. So, even if you are in between writing projects, still write something.