From Where Do You Draw Inspiration?

The other night I wrote a blog, asking from where you draw inspiration. I wanted to address that topic again, but from another view - from where I personally draw inspiration.

I honestly draw inspiration from everything around me - things I see, do, hear, feel, taste, touch, experience. A book I'm reading could yield a new way of looking at a tired old topic or offer up some delictable phrase to use somewhere else. A song could evoke a powerful emotion, one overpowering enough that I have to write about it before the memory is gone like the fluttering of a butterfly. A scent could bring to mind a scene, remembered or imagined, that strikes me as pivotal in someway and begs to be written about. I don't draw upon just a few facets of my life for inspiration.

While I'm writing, however, that's at different story. If you've read enough magazine articles about writing or read a book by a so-called "expert" on how to strengthen your writing (or even if you've ever read Stephen King's The Dark Half) you know most authoers have pecularities when it comes to working their craft. Whether it's writing everything out in long hand first or having a particular spot that they can only write in, there is some quirk. In Stephen King's Misery, Paul had a certain room in a certain hotel in Denver and a certain ritual he had to fulfill when finishing a manuscript.

For me, it's no different. How I create my masterpiece is flexible - I can use a word processor or computer, or I can write the thing out long hand (these days, age makes me prefer the computer - less harsh on fingers who have seen their fair share of tragedy), but my surroundings - that's a different story altogether.

Don't think you'll ever catch me sitting at a desk while I write. I've tried that - it's too stiff and formal. The ideas seem to be cut off by the impersonal nature of the hard wood and clutter. You can find me curled up on the couch or stretched out on my bed when the muse grabs me most oftenly - I will only sit at a desk if I have no other choice.

And music - some people can have music, some people can't. I must have music. Very emotional music, at that. The sadder or more emotional evoking the music is, the better. I went through and put together a playlist last night to listen to while I was writing. I finished the foreward, part of the prologue, and wrote a few other things. I took a break from writing but did not switch off the music... and I ended up, collapsed in a heap on the floor - crying like a baby. The emotions pulled to the surface in just three or four songs were enough to make me want to die - to bury myself and hide away from the mean, cruel world.

Sounds strange, doesn't it? To listen to romantic, emotional music when writing things as dark and disjointed as I do? I had never understood it until today - when a very insightful friend of mine (thank you, Matt) said, "you seem like a person whose emotions drag your conscious mind down a path. and then they're dragging you down another one before you even figure out the first" (or something like that - it was a few years' ago) - and it all clicked. Writing is a very emotional process - even writing an essay, you have emotions bubble up to the surface (for most people, it's thinking about how much they hate writing essays, but it's still an emotion.) Writing exposes those emotions - raw, angry, fresh emotional wounds that you try to get down on paper as best as you can.

For me, the music must act as a catalyst for the process - to get the emotions flowing enough that I am dragged down whatever path the muse wishes to lead me. Well, even if it doesn't make sense to you, it does make sense to me now.

So, quit looking for something which inspires you. You may be missing it completely by looking. Embrace the strange creature of habit that lives within your breast, and just write. You may be surprised with what happens.