Since my last post, I’ve been thinking about inspiration and where I get mine from. Whether you refer to it as talking to your muses, being struck by inspiration, or driven mad by the voices in your head, inspiration is an elusive mistress who, if you don’t tend to and care for her, will evade your every advance.
However, if you do look after your muse and listen to those babbling voices that bounce around in your head, you will be rewarded with a bounty that can compare to almost nothing: inspiration.
Some of the ways that I have been inspired recently include (as previously mentioned) dreams, songs, the all important shower time, doing the dishes, and using writing and dialogue prompts on Pinterest.
Firstly writing prompts are great little devices that are designed to spark creativity in your brain and they often make me do my inspired dance which is totally boss (not). Things like: “you live in a world where every person receives a superpower on their 18th birthday. You turn 18 tomorrow” – unknown author.
Dialogue prompts are snippets of one or more characters talking and are designed to function the same as a writing prompt, just more specifically. For example: ‘ “Yeah, I have a plan.” “Is it a good one?” “I have a plan.” ‘ or “Don’t bleed on my floor.” or “There used to be six of us… Now I’m alone.” or ” I don’t like salad or eye contact.” – authors unknown. – As you can see, I am more of a fan of dialogue prompts then writing prompts, because quite often my story ideas start with these sorts of snippets. They inspire me much more. If you are looking for prompts like this to get those juices flowing head over to my Pinterest and check out my writing prompts board; it’s full of them!
As for shower time -duh! Is there a better place to explore the sticky bits of your story that are bugging you? For example instead of Shadow-men or shadow possessed I now have the term Shadowclaimed just from a shower. They work, trust me. The same with dishes; menial tasks designed to free up the brain – just don’t blame me if you accidentally drop that plate…
The song Wings by Little Mix sparked my dystopian book idea from the line these wings were made to fly… Strong words that really spoke to me. The song has nothing to do with the book… that line just ignited my brain. It’s a lot like a dialogue prompt for me =)
And I’ve spoken about my dreams.. those vivid, intense dreams that haunt my waking life and create new voices in my mind. Like when I had a dream about Gryphon flying.. but it was a Bleach episode – the one with the Arrancar… Yeah, strange… but it told me how the muscles moved as the wings did, it showed me how strong flying would make Gryphon and how tired she would be after even a short flight…. My dreams tell me a lot man.
One day, I’ll tell you all about my Dreamweaver series… which came to me in a dream.. and is about dreaming… This brain yo!
So I hope you enjoyed and possibly learned something =) Go have a shower and become inspired!!!
x
H
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