Card Shops and Inspiration

Like all authors of fiction, I’ve often been asked where I get my ideas and inspiration from. And, like so many others, I reply that I am never short of ideas from the worlds around and within me but there is never enough time for them all to come to fruition.

The beauty of writing fiction is that you can be a cherry picker. You can create stories from what you see, hear, read, research, imagine, dream and know and there are an infinite amount of ways that these morsels can be sewn together.

Like pulling balls from a lottery machine, the combinations are unique and endless. Add in the human element and the result is that no two authors will write the same story from the same draw of balls, either. It’s sheer brilliance!

Ideas can come thick and fast and may materialize at the most inopportune moments. I have been known to duck out of the running shower to frantically jot down a brainwave, terrified that a few minutes of inaction will see it disappear into the ether! A notebook and pen are the most important things in my handbag and I also keep them by my bed for those wonderful dreams that I’m scared I will forget by morning.

The idea for The Sender came from a combination of things. I adore card shops and can happily while away an hour reading their witty, clever quotes and musings. A few years ago I picked one up that said simply, You can do better than him! I thought about the scenario – a friend giving it to someone whose relationship has ended. A kind, supportive gesture.

But then I wondered what it would feel like if someone received that same card from an anonymous sender. I immediately saw that as having far greater power. Putting myself in the recipient’s shoes it felt as if there was a guardian angel watching over me and it made me feel special.

And then my imagination took over completely. I thought, what a wonderful story that would make – an anonymous card that has a powerful effect on someone’s life. But I wanted it to be bigger than that. I wondered how it could have that same positive effect on more people.

So I thought the card would need a more generic message and also an instruction to keep it close through the rough period and then to choose someone else to send it on to. This brought in the premise of ‘paying it forward’ and the consequence is The Butterfly Effect – a seemingly small act ultimately having a huge consequence. So, by the time I had left the card shop, the rough idea for a novel had taken shape and was scrawled in haphazard sentences in my trusty notebook.

The important thing here is to let your mind be completely open to all wild and wonderful ideas that crowd it. I never jettison anything until I’ve thought it through and realise it’s either too ridiculous or just won’t work. There are currently fourteen plot ideas sitting in my laptop staring at me, crying out to be dressed in flesh and have their stories written. Some of them are far more likely to have a life than others. At this stage they are mere skeletons and some will simply become fossils. But I see that as survival of the fittest. I hope that only the best ones will make it.

In the meantime, I will continue to haunt card shops, read, read and read some more, watch, listen, dream, and let my imagination run as wild as it wishes. We are writers, and without us, the world would be monochrome.

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BUY THE SENDER HERE

Find out more about Toni on her website www.tonijenkinsauthor.com

 

Tags: card shops, featured, inspiration, self-publishing

Category: On Writing