Music, Movies or a Hair-flip? Where’s Your Writing Inspiration Come From?
June 26, 2008
Where do you get your inspiration for writing? Do you find it in everyday things? The way a bird in flight broke sharply to the left, chasing a summer bug. The way your co-worker flips her hair when talking about an ex-boyfriend. A picture posted on a fan’s blog about Buffy, The Vampire Slayer.
Or do you seek out specific types of inspiration? Movies? Paintings? Photos? Books? Trash? Music? Do you start with an idea and find the thing(s) that flesh out the idea, inspire the direction of the story or poem or novel?
With music, for example, do you put on the music first, writing what comes to mind when listening to Morphine, The Shins, Bach or Schubert? Or does the story come first with the music simply an inconsequential background sound? What if the music creeps through, into the writing, without you have noticed?
Doesn’t the fluidity of writing mean that anything can creep through? Whether music or your co-worker’s hair-flip, don’t a thousand things subconsciously infiltrate the stories and poems we write, making them totally different than what we initially conceived?
So how do we stop ourselves from going overboard? How do prevent ourselves from incorporating all of our everyday stimuli into our writing? Where’s the filter? Is this one of the marks of a great writer that they have that filter, that the means of their inspiration isn’t immediately obvious to the reader? Is this how they’re books or poems or essays become the means of our inspiration?
-Jenn
Entry Filed under: Opinion, Writing. Tags: birds, Books, inspiration, movies, music, poetry, Writing.
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1.
Jen | July 8, 2008 at 10:22 am
Interesting that you focused on music as stimulus for writing. It works the opposite way for me; noise is brain-invasion!
However, I’m very triggered by visual cues. The more subtle the moment, the bigger the pile of darn-good-ideas.
So, it’s not that attending the Olympics, for example, wouldn’t trigger some good insights for writing, but it wouldn’t have much to do with the games. It would likely come from the vendor blocks away or from pictures taken and revisited of the faces of ordinary people greeting tourists. Behind those smiles, those sunny skies, and the successfully-filled stadium are mountains of human complexity, the epiphanies so intertwined with life’s conundrum.
I guess that makes me a visual type rather than an auditory processing type!
2.
jdimos | July 9, 2008 at 8:47 am
That’s the beauty of inspiration, I suppose. It comes in a variety of guises that are as diverse as the artists who are inspired.
Thanks Jen, for sharing what inspires you.
-Justin
3.
jennhandy | July 9, 2008 at 8:49 am
I have to admit, the music thing was totally accidental. I’ve read two books within the last month, in which the author thanks specific bands for helping them break through their writer’s block and propell the story forward - I thought it was kind of interesting.
I agree with you, though - visual cues are a lot more appealing.
Thanks for the comment, Jen, and good luck with the writing!