Unsurprisingly, being cooped up in my shoebox of an apartment nearly 24/7 of late due to everything surrounding COVID-19, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the outdoors, and all the writing inspiration I’ve taken from the world around me. Fantasizing about being outside might be more accurate, really.
Today I want to talk quickly about some of my sources of inspiration and some of the things that have helped me when it comes to drawing inspiration for my writing. Maybe they’ll help any of you who are looking to write yourselves.
Travel
Travel has given me a lot of great inspiration over the years. And while it’s something I always want to do more of, I have been fortunate enough to see and visit a lot of cool places while visiting family in other parts of the world.
My trips to visit family in Scotland have certainly given my imagination loads to work with. Case in point is this hill near where they live:
Which brings me to the first thing that has really helped when it comes to turning places of inspiration into settings on the page, getting out and really feeling what it’s like to be there.
Seeing the hill from afar was enough to inspire me to include a place like that in my work, but if I hadn’t climbed it, I wouldn’t have felt the strength of the winds or the inability to escape from the sun. Also, taking videos has really helped me capture the feeling of being in a setting I want to recreate.
Closer to Home
Unfortunately, travel is expensive.
To be honest, most of the inspirations in the book I’m working on have come much closer to home. In fact, the inspiration for one of the major cities in the world came from a place I drive by on my way home to visit my parents.
A long, flat-topped ridge that juts out above the trees and ends in some sheer cliffs. Every time I’d drive by, I would think how cool a big castle or gleaming white city would look up there. It can be as simple as that.
What I think will end up being the first lines of my book actually came when I was driving along a bit of a winding road. I wrote down the description that had popped into my head in my little writing journal as soon as I got home.
Which brings me to the thing that has helped me the most – putting it into words as soon as possible.
Write it Down
I had always heard to carry around a little notebook to jot down bits and pieces as they came, and it really worked. Later, when I was struggling to come up with the opening scene, I took a look through that journal and there was the line.
It wasn’t much but it was a start.
What are your tips & tricks? Where do you draw inspiration from? Let me know in the comments below!
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