Mail Bag #11: Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?
For my writing, my jewelry, and everything else, the answer is the same: from everywhere and nowhere all at once. From the world around me. From my experiences in it. In the “about” section on my jewelry line’s website, I write that,
Browsing through our line should ideally feel like rifling through your great aunt’s jewelry box, if your great aunt were an occult practitioner and zombie hunter. We collect the exotic, the sexy, and the simply strange and transform it into truly one of a kind jewelry. Indeed, our personal focus is on one off’s and limited runs, things you won’t find anywhere else and that you’ll know no one else will ever have. Blending themes of memento mori, occult, Wicca, steampunk and fantasy into a single line, we strive to make each piece a perfect outward adornment to reflect the strange within.
Which means rifling through a lot of other people’s–not jewelry boxes, at least not in the strictest sense, but old shoe boxes at yard sales. Living in historic New England provides many opportunities for visiting antique shops, flea markets, and all kinds of out of the way places. We love taking road trips with our family, to explore–each time going somewhere we haven’t gone before. We’re also committed to, whenever possible, using recycled metal and other findings. Giving new life to old things, whether through repurposing or melting down and recasting, not only brings more joy to the world but also is better for the environment.
All of which in turn means that our designs are going to be, by nature, limited in production to the pieces we can source to create them. After sketching out a design, we start to search. Sometimes for weeks or even months, for the components we need: a certain kind of vintage glass, a certain color of bead. A certain piece of artwork, or vintage ephemera, to transform into a cabochon.
The found nature of our components are, to us, what give each piece that authentic and feel. Real Victorian prescription labels, and medical illustrations, real 1920’s glass. There just isn’t too much lying around. Which is why, for our limited edition runs, we list everything we have at once. If we’ve created six of something, then that item’s listing is going to show that six pieces are available. Six, and only six. After one sells, six drops to five. And so on. The last one is really the last one. Forever.
And I think that’s all true, in a slightly different sense, with my writing as well: it’s me, looking around and feeling inspired. The honest truth is that, when it comes to art, my problem is never too little inspiration but too much. There are so many designs I want to bring to life, so many characters in so many stories I want to bring to life, that there honestly aren’t enough hours in the day. It’s very frustrating!
Everything I create is just something I had to get out there. Sometimes I know exactly where my idea came from, as was (and is) the case with The Black Prince Trilogy. I was passed out in bed, dosed up on a mix of powerful medications, and it just came to me. All of it. At once. The Price of Desire I wrote earlier during that same illness, while bedridden but slightly more functional. In it, I dealt with a lot of feelings I had about my own life and how I’d gotten to where I was. As well as, of course, telling a story that had nothing to do with me. But aren’t all novels, in some sense, however attenuated, autobiographies?
We right what we know, we design what we know. My jewelry, like my novels, is, at heart, what interests me. I’ve often said that putting your book out there to be read is like letting any number of total strangers climb inside your head and poke around and I think jewelry evokes something of the same: only instead of climbing inside my head, it’s wearing a piece of how I see the world around your neck.
