Almost every interview I’ve done has asked about my inspiration in some way. Where do your ideas come from? What inspires you? I usally sneak by with a glib answer like “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” “My imagination.” or “Everywhere.”
The honest answer is I Don’t Know – usually.
Sometimes a song, will inspire me, or a person I meet, or even another book. Yeah, I know, authors aren’t really supposed to admit that reading other books can inspire them, not in the way I’m about too. Carrie touched on it briefly yesterday when she said she’s watched the second Pirates of the Carribean, and thought, “I can do it better.” Well, I read a lot, and when I’m done, sometimes I think, “I can do it better.” That’s not to say everyone agrees with me, or even that I can do it better. But that story I just read sparked something inside me, and that’s one of the ways I can get inspired.
It’s important to realize that inspiration and ideas are different things too. It may sound silly to say that, but I think many people think they are interchangeable terms. For me, inspiration is what gives birth to the ideas. Eighty-five percent of the time, my inspiration comes from within. I can’t say exactly where though. It’s just there. A spark buried deep within me, waiting to float to the surface and be molded into an idea, and a story. Inspiration can be ellusive, and it’s not something an author can always rely on. This is where the creative aspects of being an author meet the business aspects. Any professional writer will agree that you can’t always wait around for inspiration to strike. You have to find ways to create, even when uninspired, because it is your job.
Inspiration is great when it happens, but you can’t depend on it.
This is where ideas can come in handy. They are everywhere! Read the newspaper, people watch at the mall, use something that happened to you as a springboard. The idea of a blind date gone awry got me started on my novella THE DEVIL INSIDE, and inspiration didn’t strike until around the third chapter. When it did hit though, the rest of the story flowed like magic for me.
The idea for Wicked came about because the main character, Karl, who was a throw away character in Bound, also showed up in Trouble. He was a ‘lifestyle’ Dom, and I’d never writen a true BDSM story before that, so I figured why not? Sometimes my story ideas come to me from the idea of a character, and sometimes it’s a plot. And sometimes, since I write erotic, it’s from a type of sexual fantasy.
Because when I first started to write fiction, I wrote short stories, I often started with the sexual aspect. What type of story did I want to write? Vanilla, Male domination, Female Domination, voyuerism, threesome…the options are many. Then I’d either decide on a character from who’s POV I wanted to tell the story, and that woud set the tone. Or sometimes I’d start with tone (soft and sensual, kinky and edgy, or raw and raunchy) and then build character and setting around that.
Being inspired can feel magical. The ideas are plentiful, floating around in your head just waiting for you to grab one and run with it. I give glib answers to the question of what inspires me, and where do my story ideas come from because for me, there is no easy answer – and because part of me is afraid that if I disect it too much, if I dig too deep, the magic will disappear.
Silly? Who knows, but not analyzing it too much works well for me. What works well for you?
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Like you, I have NO IDEA where my ideas come from. Some of what is in my stories is my own life, bits and pieces that I don’t mind sharing. Others come from friends, music, even wind. Yes, I’m that odd person who stands in the middle of a parking lot when the wind is blowing hard, with their eyes closed and head back.
This is why I married someone who isn’t at all creative; he keeps me from being run over.
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LOL. Thank god for your hubby, huh? Have you seen the movie STRANGER THAN FICTION with Will Farrell? I get the feeling you’d like it.
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I’m a huge music geek – all kinds of music. And when an idea hits, I have a tendency to listen to the song over and over to see if the idea sticks around. I let it fester if you will, in my mind – but I try not to watch the video because I don’t want to be influenced by it. I’ve gotten ideas from reading too. It’s that spark of something. Sometimes people will just be talking and I’ll think what a great line that was and work around that. It happens at odd times too. Like when I’m folding laundry.
Great post thanks Sasha!!
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A variety of music and art inspire me, but so do poetry, flowers, interesting words and dares. It’s also a mistake to tell me I can’t write something.
Finding inspiration has never been as difficult for me as managing all the ideas that pop into my head. At times the number of stories that start to take shape are intimidating; I’ll never be able to write them all. Anbd then there’s analyzing them and choosing the best to explore while not second-guessing myself.
I agree with you on not digging too deep. I also don’t discuss ideas in detail with anyone other than my agent, and then only to see if she thinks it’s marketable. Doing otherwise tends to jinx things.