Thursday, September 17, 2015

Inspiration? Hmmm

I'm posting over at Women's Fiction Writers today. The talk is on inspiration and where it comes from--the jungles of Mexico's Yucatan being one of mine.

Inspiration can be a funny thing. You might have to dig for it, but after researching (that research being from books, the internet or by experience) it will come forth, sometimes in an unexpected moment of reverie. Or maybe while washing the dishes. You have to be ready to grasp that sucker and get it down.

I like to give my fellow writers notebooks to write down when that moment of inspiration hits. Or any details that strike their imagination. We lose so much as our minds hurry along their speeding tracks of everyday life. 

Inspiration is right there in our every day experience-everywhere. It's a matter of picking up a moment, a feeling, an image, an idea and rolling it around until you find the opening in. 

Traveling - and it doesn't have to be far -  is an excellent way to pick up the trail to another story. Earlier this year I went to the coast and visited Carmel at night. A walk down one of the streets yielded a moment when I captured a short video on my phone of a lone artist, sitting in a gallery, playing a guitar.  
           (I'm not sure if you will be able to see this video, but here it is. Let me know.)


The whole sense of his loneliness, the walls of paintings behind him as he sat on that single chair in the middle of the gallery playing for himself yielded a story which I later sent off to an anthology. 

So grab a notebook, your phone or camera and grasp those moments of life that impress you. You may not know why at the moment, but it will stew and maybe become the inspiration for a story. If nothing else, a treasured memory to store in your box of memories.

 

No comments: