OK, I admit it. I’m dragging in the inspiration department
here lately. Working hard on revisions means I’m not creating much new stuff, although
I did just finish some flash fiction for Halloween and Christmas. The pressure
of the 31 Day Blog Challenge pushing me to come up with new content every day
got me thinking about my “inspiration” process. Where do I find my ideas?
So, as I thought about it, I realized most of my ideas, but
not all of them, start with a theme. The flash stories were inspired first by
those holidays, but secondly by the feeling or the message that I wanted to
convey. I had a general idea what genre
I wanted to write in, i.e. gothic, steampunk, but after that, I think my ideas
come from a conglomeration of things I’ve been thinking about, heard or read.
Things that are stewing about in my subconscious. Going on trips to places I
haven’t been, or places I haven’t been in a long time inspire me as well.
Seeing an intriguing person can inspire me too.
Because I can’t travel all the places I’d love to go, I’ve
found myself creating boards on Pinterest that inspire me. I can’t say that any one photograph on
Pinterest has led me to create a story, but the photos there have certainly
helped me flesh out the worlds I’ve created in my head. The same with music. I
can’t write with music playing because it distracts me, but the feeling music
invokes can definitely be inspiring. I
even created playlists for my books; you can take a listen here.
So what inspires you? I’d like to know…
My once a week blog posts are inspired by a pencil drawing that I do first. The process of drawing gets me solidly into my right brain, so my internal critic doesn't shut down my writing (which it often does - sigh). I look at the drawing and write whatever it inspires (and the drawing becomes a part of the blog post). Since I switched to this method, I've been having much more fun with my posts! Now if I can somehow get this to work for fiction writing.... :)
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