Ever wish you were stranded at a cabin in the mountains with snow piling up around you with only your computer and nothing better to do than write? That's basically the situation I'm in right now and let me be honest, I haven't gotten any writing done. But I am curled up in an overstuffed easy chair next to the dying embers of a fire we built earlier today, aspiring to write. Here's a picture outside the window next to me....
It's such an inspiring atmosphere and everything. So, I've decided to talk on inspiration. I am known to get inspiration from everything. From well-done movies to preschool TV shows to pictures to lyrics to quotes to a single word.
I'm going to tell you my secret to constantly having story inspiration. Take things out of context.
For example, in a preschool TV show called Peep and the Big Wide World there is an episode in which there is a beaver. He's having a ceremony, a coming of age ceremony of sorts, to chew down his first tree. He invites his friends and he's so excited. He doesn't listen to his parent's instructions on how to chew down the tree and begins to gnaw at the trunk. He does it in a non-methodical way and nearly smushes his friends and family. He runs off, discouraged. Hours later, he comes back and offers to try again. His parents don't think he should because of the result of last time. But, he tries again and gets it right. So, take it out of context here. Pretend this character isn't a beaver and that what he's trying to overcome is not a tree. What if it were a person who had tried multiple times to overcome this one thing and when it finally came down to it, and things were at stake and he was the only person available to do it. Everyone told him he shouldn't do it, but he did it anyway and this time succeeded.
So...find little things to be inspired in. Look specifically. Take things out of context and imagine what might happen if it was somewhere else.
