Friday, October 14, 2011

A source of inspiration

Dreams!  They're fun right?  Sure but they only linger for a short while.  Most of us can barely remember our dreams come morning.  My mother was one of those people that dreamed in abstract.  Nothing was ever as it seemed.  It wasn't uncommon for her to tell me about dreams of purple skies, pink elephants and blue strawberries.  Weird huh? 

For me, that has never been an issue.  My dreams are as real as they come...which makes it fun since most of the time I know that I am dreaming.  Can you change your dreams?  Many people say you can not.  I guess I'm lucky in that aspect...perhaps that's the writer in me.  My greatest inspiration for my books come directly from my dreams.  It's like a movie unfolding right before my eyes.  It really makes writing effortless and oh so enjoyable when you're not banging your head against a brick wall for an idea!

I see every detail from many angles.  I see the story line laid out before me...and if I don't like the way it's going I simply change it.  Now of course that doesn't happen every time.  I'm just like everyone else.  When I'm trapped in a nightmare and my legs feel like jelly when I try to run away to safety, my mind switches off and allows me to simply feel the fear.

BUT...other dreams, my creative dreams are like a blank canvas to an artist.  I can paint any scene that I want, change the plot midstream and after I awake I can finish writing the conclusion.  Many nights I have spent lying awake, staring blankly up at the ceiling as I finished out the final details of my newest creation.  What's my next step?

I race to the bathroom, huddle under the light and scribble down every detail as fast as my cramping fingers will allow.  These details will later be stored as book ideas.  Remember that file system i mentioned in a previous blog?  Yep...mine is extensive. 

When I find myself stumped on one book I flip to the next until my inspiration returns.  As a writer, writer's block is a fact of life...but that doesn't mean you simply stop writing.  You push through, switch up genres or simply write for the fun of it. 

So where do you get your inspiration from?



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