Inspiration

My first blog post from home.

Inspiration comes from many places, and it is different for every creator. Artists, composers, writers, we all get our inspiration from someplace different. Sometimes it’s internal, sometimes external, and sometimes a complicated combination of the two with an external source sparking something inside the creator, usually with the result being totally different than the external impetus. For me, it comes in flashes and in a variety of ways. Quite often I get whole stories out of my dreams, played out like a movie behind my eyelids and semi-directed by my consciousness. This only results in logical coherent stories in a certain state of sleeping, and I usually wake up before I find out what happens, so the rest of story is sweated out without the magic of my dreaming-mind.

Sometimes a story comes from a character, who often springs into my mind fully formed. Those are a little harder to plan, because the character’s story isn’t always easy to elicit. And sometimes the character is more interesting than their story. Aurelia is a bit like this. Her story changes and evolves in my head but she remains the same. She’s almost like my muse in some ways, but her story refuses to come into clear focus. Some day I may pin it to the page in some final form, or she may remain locked in my brain forever. Characters are unpredictable like that.

Occasionally places or people can inspire ideas that don’t belong to a story yet. Recently I visited Luray Caverns, a beautiful cavern complex in western Virginia. The caverns inspired several ideas for underground kingdoms and such things, but no particular story ideas. Rather than waste that inspiration I simply noted it down for future use when the right story came along. Maybe I’ll never use them, or maybe my next story will turn out to need such a cave-system.

The important thing is to always be receptive to whatever flashes or bits of inspiration may appear, and to always have a notational device of some sort on one’s person. In my case, I keep a little spiral notebook, just small enough to fit in my purse. One never knows when or where the muse will strike next, and I like to always be prepared!

Thought for the Week: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Thomas A. Edison

Currently Reading: Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery

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