Borrowing from Real Life
You know that saying, “Art imitating life”? It’s always felt like way more of an artsy saying than I feel like I am and therefore I wouldn’t normally use it, but it came to my mind as I was writing this post. Which is all about how a saying from one of my best friends made it into my latest book, Whispers of Enchantment.
InspirationWhen the poor heroine Dahlia is thrown into being the only human employee at a hotel for supernaturals after her own carefully laid plans fall apart, she tries to pump herself up by assuring herself, “I can do anything temporarily!” Because she only plans to work at the hotel for as short an amount of time as possible before going back to her real life plans.
This quote comes from my friend who is a nurse – who often uses that saying in connection with her work. Nursing, unsurprisingly, can be quite the high stress job, so that mantra helps keep her calm when things are rough. Or at least she pretends like it helps sometimes ;)
I’ve always really liked that saying, and it felt like it fit perfectly not only with Dahlia’s personality, but with the situation she’s in. And they say the best stories take inspiration from real life! Even in urban fantasy because, at their core, stories are about the human experience whether it’s set in a small town with a tight-knit community or in the fae realm with dragons flying overhead.
At least that’s how I feel about things. As the writer Neil Gaiman has said, the magic of stories isn’t that they tell us dragons are real, but that the dragons in our lives can be conquered.
Usually my real life inspiration and borrows in my stories come more from myself, so it was fun to include something from one of my friends. And it can be good to remind ourselves that a tough situation is only temporary . . . though the advice doesn’t work so well for situations that aren’t temporary. Maybe I’ll find a quote someday that helps with that!
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