How do you find Inspiration?
Instant Inspiration
One of the commonest questions fiction writers get asked, I think, is “where does your inspiration come from?”
The simplest, and actually truest, answer is “everywhere”, yet that always sounds like a cop-out to me. In reality, inspiration CAN come from anywhere; from your everyday life, from the people around you. It hides within the events of your day, or maybe what you see on TV or read in the newspaper. It can spring out at you from something you overheard, some joke or snippet of gossip while you were in the coffee shop or having lunch with your friends. Creative people can recognize inspiration where others might only see the ordinary, or mundane.
Personally, I think that finding inspiration also depends on what type of genre you write in. If I was a romance writer, or a crime writer, I could find a wealth of inspiration on any news channel. Horror writers too, I’d imagine – far too often! But what if you’re like me, a fantasy writer? How does a writer who works in unfamiliar, created worlds find inspiration? Does it come purely from our own imagination or can it also be found in our everyday lives?
The answer, of course, is “yes, of course it can,” and just the other day I found a prime example of how inspiration works for me.
I am extremely fortunate to live in a particularly beautiful and rural part of North Hampshire in the UK. I am surrounded by farmland, by fields of crops, by hedges that change their colors depending on the season. Rabbits and hares, deer and pheasant run in the fields (not always a good thing when you own Lurchers, as I do!) and there are wide field margins around which the farmer permits us to walk. Our roads are country lanes and therefore fairly quiet, and the village is one of the prettiest around. It also contains some of the nicest people you could wish to meet.
This area is primarily a working, food-producing farm. Wheat, sesame, oilseed rape, grass for seed and hay, sheep, cattle and pigs can all be found in the fields. Tractors are a regular sight and they can churn up the lanes and field margins, especially at this time of year. Farmers by nature and profession are a practical lot, not given, you’d be excused for thinking, to flights of fancy. And yet, one day, I turned a corner of a field I often walk around and was confronted by the scene in the photo above. There, in the entrance to a mundane, muddy, working farmyard were these fabulous standing stones, appearing as if by magic (although I suspect by tractor) overnight. I was entranced. Such an unexpected sight immediately set my writing senses a-tingle – how could I fail to be inspired?
What gets your creative juices flowing? Has anyone else come across something so unexpected, it resulted in a piece of writing? I’d love to hear!
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I am so like you in many ways, Cas. I find inspiration for romance everywhere. Since I love writing about the past, part of the story for my novel, Wicked Embers, came to me as I was walking through a small cemetary. I find my best ideas have always come by just observing the world around me.
I especially love places like cemetaries, Candace – apart from their peacefulness, they are so full of untold stories. One of my favourite places as a child was an abandoned chapel near my grandparents’ home. I loved it so much that it actually features in the second trilogy of my Artesans series.
Great piece, Cas. I decided to throw up a blog I have been working on about this very topic. See, you just inspired me.
Great minds and all that, Doug!
I love making up stories, and was recently inspired by an unexpected visitor. A few months ago, we had a pigeon adopt us for a short while. This pigeon would fly, flutter in place and look in our windows, as if to say, “I’m here, let me in.” The pigeon was not afraid of us, and when we would go outside, she would follow us along the rail, or sit on the back of the chair we were occupying. This pigeon actually walked up my arm and sat with me, and ate out of my hand. After a couple of days passed, I decided I should go out an get her some pigeon food. She happily scratched and ate, making quite a mess of our deck actually. She took to roosting right at our back slider or under the table my husband had made for our deck. We noticed that she wore some kind of paper tag on her leg. We decided she was a homing pigeon, and we named her “Brigett” (best if said with a French accent). One day I came down stairs and went out on the deck to say “Good morning Brigett”, but she was gone. I have decided there is a children’s story there. Where she came from, why she stayed…? We don’t really know, but I think we were a rest stop along the way. I hope she remembers us and stops by again. This was definitely an unexpected inspiration, I am just glad I took some pictures of her.
That’s a lovely story, Robyn, thanks for sharing! I think you’re right, it probably was a racing pigeon as it was so comfortable around humans. When I lived in Italy a wild ring-dove used to visit the garden and was tame enough to eat corn from the table where I was sitting. I wondered if someone had hand-reared it. I too took pictures.
I think writing a story around your unusual visitor is a great idea, you could make quite an enchanting mystery tale out of it!