Ramblings On Inspiration
Inspiration, Process, Craft... All that fun stuff.
Art is a living thing.
It grows in the same way we do.
Born from a seed of inspiration, it grows awkwardly, messily, and unbound into adolescence. Stumbles into the teenage years, where nothing works, and everything feels out of place. Hopeless. Eventually arrives at adulthood. Though it remains eternally unfinished, it begins to take shape. Starts to resemble something whole. Complete. A fusion of ideas, observations and experiences collected into a story.
The process through which art is created is equally reminiscent of life.
The panic that it will not come together.
The fear that inspiration will not strike.
The inability to control how and when it arrives.
The effort required to maintain motivation when the initial high inevitably dwindles.
The satisfaction when everything kind of works out in the end.
And it all begins with inspiration.
Keeping my imagination consistently stimulated is essential for me. My well must be constantly overflowing with half-baked ideas, to enable me to swat away the engulfing Doom of Writer’s Block.
I’ve been analysing my relationship with inspiration. Figuring out ways to shift my mindset to keep the spark constantly flickering. It’s been interesting.
I’ve learned that my writing is comprised mostly of an amalgamation of four sources of inspiration. Shadows of ideas trickle in, are categorised and left to stew. Eventually, they bubble to the surface, revealing themselves as the missing ingredient that ties everything together.
Very satisfying.
The Greater Picture - Theme
This relates to the world beyond my own. A discourse around world events (SOS). A conversation that strikes a chord. Societal structures that I feel the need to explore. A moment in the cultural zeitgeist that stays with me. Something that resonates, pulls me in, compels me to engage with it. To investigate it in some way. To connect with the motivations that drive those with opposing worldviews. Not to agree, but to understand.
Which is why I write, really. Stories help me make sense of the external world.
The Personal - Character
I write fiction. My characters are fictional. And yet, elements of myself exist within all of them.
As if for each character, a certain part of myself is centred, amplified, modified and used as the outline within which a fictional person is created. It’s how I connect to the work. I will not centre a story around the experiences of a middle-aged man, because those are not experiences I can relate to.
There is always some of me in my characters, even though they are not me. Confusing, perhaps. A line that is easily blurred. People often struggle to separate the art from the artist. Which is fair. It is only natural that people associate your art with you. The creator.
But I think there has to exist some personal truth in art. If there weren’t, it really wouldn’t be good, and it really wouldn’t be art. An expression of the human condition cannot be created without humanity.
The Random
This well is filled by the mundane. The everyday. People watching. Wandering around bookshops. Browsing antique stores. Taking public transport. I’ve discovered that my daily bus route is one of the richest sources of inspiration at my disposal. Something about the routine of it all. The strangers living their lives, the interactions, the constant movement, the time to observe. I watch the scenes unfold with a near voyeuristic fascination.
This is something I learned during my acting training. And it works.
Selecting a stranger, observing them. Watching the specificity of their actions, creating a backstory, and imagining the motivations behind their decisions.
Who they are. What they want. What is their morning routine? What is their coffee order? Creating a world for them to exist within.
The stories start writing themselves.
Find myself frantically jotting down fragmented and very misspelt notes in a never-ending email chain with myself. These ideas arrive rapidly, urgently and tend not to linger. Noting them down immediately is essential. Annoying for my fellow travellers, I’m sure, when I pause suddenly on the footpath, in a busy train station, or halfway out of the bus to jot down a thought.
We spend so much of our lives racing from A to B, letting the world pass us by. Or, I do, anyway. Busy in my head, rehearsing conversations that will never happen, I disconnect from my surroundings, filtering out the abundance of inspiration around me.
Something I’ve been trying recently, and enjoying immensely, is exploring the world with focused attention, using all my senses. Plant myself down somewhere, listen to the sounds, analyse the smells, tastes, sights and feelings that I experience, and write them down. Doesn’t take me long to fill a few pages.
I quickly learned that there is a story in everything. A scrap of rubbish being trailed along the grey concrete by a lazy breeze suddenly lights up an idea that has nearly fully decayed with dormancy.
The Craft
This one is pretty self-explanatory. I enjoy experimenting. Selecting a specific style, genre, format or tone and challenging myself to create within that barometer.
A piece I wrote recently titled “Control Your Rage, Fix Your Mind, or Don’t” explores a woman attempting to control her anger.
I don’t experience anger as she does. I’m not generally an angry person.
But when I read about the 62 million Academy (the Greater Picture), I certainly felt enraged. So I magnified that feeling (the Personal), and that became the scaffolding on which I built that character. My goal was to use pace and rhythm to create a claustrophobic atmosphere. The aim was to create tension in the reader that mirrored the character’s anger. (the Craft)
The series “Nodus Tollens” I am currently writing started as a desire to centre a project around journal entries. The intimacy, honesty and unfiltered nature of the format seemed an interesting lens through which to explore a character. (the Craft)
I have had conversations with many women in my life who feel an inexplicable underlying dissatisfaction with their lives. The source of which feels impossible to identify. Like they are living a life that isn’t truly theirs. Or the life they thought they wanted isn’t what they want anymore. This idea struck a chord and swirled around my mind for a long time. (Greater Picture)
Naturally, there are aspects of this character’s journey that mirror my own life experiences. (The Personal)
The title appeared to me through a vocabulary app I downloaded. (The Random)
“Nodus Tollens - The realisation that your life story doesn’t make sense to you anymore”
This felt immediately significant and became the thread that tied these different sources together. And so, this project was born.
My short story “Mr Rooney” was inspired by my many years in the trenches of customer service.
Last year, while working at a yoga centre, a very angry man arrived at 7 am to berate me for the price of yoga mats. Jaded, (as the character is), by the relentlessness of being the punching bag on which strangers unload their misplaced anger, inspiration struck. Random. For sure. Grateful now, as this interaction led to the short story, which in turn inspired the novel I am currently writing. The piece of work I am most excited about.
(Please don’t take that as a go-ahead to be rude to customer service staff)
Anyway. It is endlessly interesting to me to talk to other artists, peek behind the curtain and learn how the proverbial sausage is made.
I really hate that expression. There must be a less visceral way to say that… “How the proverbial bread is baked?” Let’s go with that.
So this is how my bread is baked.
The Craft provides structure.
The Greater Picture provides a theme.
The Random provides specifics.
The Personal creates the character.
The Character drives the plot.
And, I’m just here for the ride.
"The well is filled by the mundane" how absolutely wise! I've always sought creative fuel from grand external sources. I never thought to be content, sit still, and observe. Thank you for that beautiful insight.