As writers, we often talk about inspiration as something that happens to us – something that strikes us in odd moments, and not always when we’re looking for it. But that’s not really true. We can seek out the things that inspire us whenever we like, rather than waiting for them to come to us.
What inspires us is personal. It will be different for everyone. But even if you feel like you’re not sure where your inspiration comes from, it’s actually pretty easy to find out.
Start by thinking about what inspired the ideas you’re working on right now. What prompted you to ask, “I wonder…?” or “What if…?”
For me, it’s history. I love learning about the history of a place or a profession, looking at old paintings and photographs and seeing what questions they churn up.
My two main works in progress started with 1) a painting I saw in the Museum of London, showing a fair being held on the ice of a frozen Thames, and 2) a photograph of a huge cemetery in Italy, the hillsides covered in marble graves. These two pictures gave me such a strong sense of a setting, and I was able to start populating them with their own histories, my characters, a plot.
I also love mudlarking. These two objects are my favourite ever finds from the Thames foreshore and they both sent my imagination reeling.
As far as I can tell, the thimble on the left is from around the 17th or 18th century, likely from the London factory of a Dutch maker (this website was an excellent source of information as I sat excitedly googling afterwards). When I look at it, I wonder about the lives of the worker who made it, the women who might have used it, and how it ended up in the Thames.
The strange, glazed, ridged cube on the right appears to be a piece from a game played in Victorian times, known variously as “snobs”, “gobs”, or “knucklebones”. There are some other examples found by mudlark Lara Maiklem here. It’s easy to imagine a gang of children crouched in the street playing this game, and to imagine their disappointment when they realised one of their beautiful pieces had gone missing.
These finds, my visits to museums, and snippets from history books all spark my imagination in a way that just doesn’t happen when I’m sat at my desk staring at an empty Word document. And so, when I find inspiration lacking, I can go seek it out – not just blindly hoping that it’ll come my way, but in the knowledge that these are the exact same things that have given me ideas in the past.
So what has prompted you to write before?
Was it a movie? A strange story in the newspaper? Then go watch more movies and read more articles! A photograph? Politics? A conversation? Visiting new places?
The point is: inspiration is everywhere. Sometimes we might stumble across it by accident, and that’s great, but we don’t have to rely on luck. We can narrow down where to find it, then get out there and chase it down!
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