A Very Good Place to Start
At the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival two years ago, I had the distinct pleasure of having someone ask me where I'd gotten the idea for "Heart." "Heart" was my first published short story, and I'd just finished reading from it - in front of actual people - and was probably a little less than coherent in my answer.
Partly because I didn't really know.
Inspiration is sometimes quite memorable for me. I know, for example, exactly how the latest story I'm working on came to be. I was quite literally staring at the screen, with music playing in the background, trying to think of how I could write a story that involved a train (the theme of the anthology to which I wanted to submit a tale) and at that moment, the iPhone played DeVotchKa's "How It Ends."
I'd heard the song before, but between the song's lyrics, the random photos of trains and train stations I was looking at online, an idea formed almost fully there and then. I wrote it the (very) rough draft in one massive sitting over the space of a few hours.
For the record? That's rare.
Othertimes, there's no one set moment of inspiration and I have, instead, a character, a setting or - most often - a final line or scene in mind where I want the tale to end. Often it doesn't actually end up resembling that original piece, but it will get me going.
As for "Heart," it wasn't until quite a bit later I found the answer. I was cleaning up my many, many journals and filing scraps of paper (so many scraps of paper!) upon which I'd written bits and pieces of ideas, or dialog, or what-have-you. I was filing them, and found the journal and scraps of paper I'd written on while my father was in the hospital for the last time. He had a rare cancer - heart cancer - and at some point, I'd scribbled something along the lines of this:
What if you could heal, but you only had it in you to keep one heart going?
Not quite what "Heart" turned out to be, but it was where the idea apparently germinated. Who knew?
I've had ideas form from songs, from walking tours (do yourself a favor and take a "Haunted Walk" tour sometime!), from vacations (Scotland is a trove of wonderful ideas), from paintings (a particular image of Prometheus in chains has sparked a story that has been in my "in progress" pile for a long time) and other random bits and pieces (someone wrote their name in the sand where I was on honeymoon, and that sparked a series of 100 word entries as a cohesive story.)
So how about you? Where have some of your ideas begun?
Partly because I didn't really know.
Inspiration is sometimes quite memorable for me. I know, for example, exactly how the latest story I'm working on came to be. I was quite literally staring at the screen, with music playing in the background, trying to think of how I could write a story that involved a train (the theme of the anthology to which I wanted to submit a tale) and at that moment, the iPhone played DeVotchKa's "How It Ends."
I'd heard the song before, but between the song's lyrics, the random photos of trains and train stations I was looking at online, an idea formed almost fully there and then. I wrote it the (very) rough draft in one massive sitting over the space of a few hours.
For the record? That's rare.
Othertimes, there's no one set moment of inspiration and I have, instead, a character, a setting or - most often - a final line or scene in mind where I want the tale to end. Often it doesn't actually end up resembling that original piece, but it will get me going.
As for "Heart," it wasn't until quite a bit later I found the answer. I was cleaning up my many, many journals and filing scraps of paper (so many scraps of paper!) upon which I'd written bits and pieces of ideas, or dialog, or what-have-you. I was filing them, and found the journal and scraps of paper I'd written on while my father was in the hospital for the last time. He had a rare cancer - heart cancer - and at some point, I'd scribbled something along the lines of this:
What if you could heal, but you only had it in you to keep one heart going?
Not quite what "Heart" turned out to be, but it was where the idea apparently germinated. Who knew?
I've had ideas form from songs, from walking tours (do yourself a favor and take a "Haunted Walk" tour sometime!), from vacations (Scotland is a trove of wonderful ideas), from paintings (a particular image of Prometheus in chains has sparked a story that has been in my "in progress" pile for a long time) and other random bits and pieces (someone wrote their name in the sand where I was on honeymoon, and that sparked a series of 100 word entries as a cohesive story.)
So how about you? Where have some of your ideas begun?
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