On Inspiration

“As long as people exist, I’ll never lack inspiration.” -Morello

The interesting thing about inspiration is that if you are open, it can come from anywhere. In this regard, I am more like John Irving. I often start with real people. In fact, I often start with me. That said, I’m not as interesting as any of my characters, nor have I done everything they’ve done. (Then again, they haven’t done everything I’ve done either, so that makes us even.) I will start with a glimpse of reality and then take that reality to its highest point.

I am borrowing that “heightened reality” idea from the theatre. Theatre is not reality. Not even realism is reality, but what it has or what it exploits are those high points in reality. With very few exceptions, you don’t see characters watching television or cutting their nails. Those bits are edited out of the piece that tries to give you the more interesting interactions in one’s life.

So, I may take a line I’ve heard and build a character or a scene around it. The line is the inspiration, it evokes a feeling, and I take that line to what I think is the logical conclusion. Fine, I admit that the conclusions might occasionally be a little farfetched. Let me give you an example.

I was at a café in DC recently. I was going to start a short story right then and there. I sat down on a couch and started thinking and playing with ideas. I was thinking of things I’ve done, seen, or heard when a woman sat down on the couch with me. That act, the act of a woman I’ve never met sitting down next to me, started an avalanche of ideas. The café morphed into a slightly different café. The couch was altered, and so was the woman. I never did speak to her beyond the little pleasantries, and I set to work. Eventually, she became, or a version of her became, a significant character in a novel. It was an unexpected but perhaps fortuitous accident. I was inspired.

For me, it is hard to get inspired if I am not in public doing things. I want to jump out of planes, swim at the bottom of the Caribbean, and ski down mountains. I also want to talk to people, from the kid who led me down the most dangerous rapids in Colombia, to politicians, to the guy who built dams and bridges for the WPA.

These are just a few of the things that inspire me. The key is to find out what inspires you, and I would like to hear from you on this topic. What is it that inspires you?