Unusual Inspiration

When you think of inspiration, what are your initial thoughts? Could it have something to do with your muse, creativity or perhaps you think of something far more abstract and intangible?

Whatever the inspiration; it’s often the universal question asked of writers, artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, performers, musicians…in fact, anyone who is creating any form of art.

It’s a way to pin that writer or artist down with the perennial question of …. how? How did you manage to come up with what you did?

It’s like an audience peeking behind the curtain, in the vain hope that they might find some truism. Some mystical entity that exudes the magic of your inspiration in the hope to understand it better…. whatever that ‘it’ may be.

Possibly gain an insight into that whole windows to your soul business. Which begs the question of whether such an explanation is ever actually needed? Possibly not but it does somehow pave the way for others to find a path to find their own creativity. A how-to road map to guide you into the unknown, if you’re brave enough to venture there.

And that’s just it, with inspiration- it stems from somewhere hidden within your cognitive consciousness (and unconsciousness) that sparks when it connects with ideas that make sense to your writing; your art. It’s the pattern plate eureka moment that screams when you happen to be listening. All you have to do, is to be receptive to its call.

So, what do you need to do, to catch it and shape the inspiration to your will?

Start with finding it in the first place. Be open to everything around you- although it should, perhaps, be said that context is important when sniffing out the source to your inspiration. But then again not….

By its very nature inspiration is elusive and highly personal. And it can come from absolutely anywhere.

Think of the song ‘Yesterday’, that Paul McCartney literally dreamt up one night. The following morning, he scrambled to put pen to paper, and grab it before it was gone…. How fortuitous that one of the most famous songs of all time came by.…in a dream. And yet it’s worth remembering that this happened in the heyday of the Beatles and the height of McCartney’s creativity.

Then there’s the songsmith, Kate Bush who took the beloved classic- ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte and weaved fragments of the narrative into a four-minute pop song- even going so far as embodying the tragic character of Catherine Earnshaw, herself. She was only eighteen years old when she wrote it and nineteen when it was released straight into Rock and Roll history with its enduring popularity. Then there’s Adele who poured her heart into her poignant and award-winning album ‘21’, after a particularly painful breakup with her then boyfriend.

Writers too use their personal experiences into shaping a theme, idea or concept that they can use as a muse for their work. There’s the ever-popular Jane Austen whose beloved novels have been a window into the mores of early 19th century with its contemporary social commentary. Many of her most well-loved characters were based on people she actually knew.

Then there’s Charlotte Bronte’s gothic master piece; Jane Eye- a nuanced novel with somewhat an autobiographical element woven throughout. Daphne du Maurier, too, used her insecurities and jealousy of her husband’s first marriage to a woman who she believed to be far superior and exceptionally glamourous and poured them into the nameless narrator in the classic; Rebecca.

Even the famous opening line- ‘Last night I dreamt of Manderley again.’ – Was in itself a dreamlike opening filled with a potency of the unrequited longing prevalent throughout the novel. Manderley, too, was based on her memories of Menabilly House in Cornwall.

Or there are outside influences such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South- which combines romantic realism, as it examines social inequality with the rapid growth of industrialization in urban development and its by-product of poverty and destitution in Victorian Britain.

These themes occur in some of her other work and were of huge importance to Gaskell.

Social inequality and injustice were also themes in Alice Walker’s Pulitzer winning epistolary novel; The Colour Purple, but were far more personal to the author. Here, as the first African/ American woman to win such an accolade, she used her own perspective to create ‘an intimacy with her ancestors’, as she would later explain, to examine sexuality, poverty slavery, as well as racial and spousal abuse.

Azar Nafisi, too used her own experience at the time of the 1979 Iranian revolution to highlight the injustice and tightening of personal and social freedom, especially for women in her memoir; Reading Lolita in Tehran. As a professor in English literature, at the University of Tehran, she saw first-hand the slow systemic censorship of material deemed corruptive by the new patriarchal Islamic government.

As for myself- my journey may be new but I too, am using everything around me- things that interest, intrigue and captivate me to shape, use and explore within the context of my historical romantic novels. My inspirations for my books have been using a combination of ideas, themes and tropes set within specific moments in history.

Ultimately what matters in the end, is that when you do find the inspiration for your writing, to have the confidence to run with it!

The Rebel Heiress And The Knight (Mills & Boon Historical)

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing