The Source of Inspiration

Some time ago, I was reading an article in The Writer's Chronicle magazine (February 2012) by Alice Mattison titled "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" Now, all respect is due Ms. Mattison for a deep and thought-provoking article; and I'm sure some account should be taken for word-count requirements, and a certain level of intellect required to be featured in such a magazine. But my golly: way to take the fun out of writing.

So I thought I might take the next few weeks and talk about the inspirations and impetus' for the stories featured in my anthology, If They Keep Silent.And I thought I'd kick off this little series with some of my own thoughts about ideas, inspirations, and general sources of this stuff we call writing.

I don't know what kind of writer it makes me, but I always, always have a theme in mind when I write a story. I don't know if it's because of the era we live in, or if writers are trying to pass themselves off as more of an artist than they are, but all the talk about starting a story or writing about characters with no idea of what's going to happen or what kind of story is going to emerge seems...hallucinogenic. Further, I don't know if the dominance of poetry plays any part into why writers talk the way they do. 

But I'm not that way. See, we invent chairs because we need a place to sit. We invent tables to set food on, or benches to make work easier, or tools to fulfill certain tasks. Everywhere else in the world, new things are made to fill a purpose. Neither do I sit down to write a story without some intent in mind, some thing about life that I want to address. Perhaps it's what helps me to be somewhat prolific, at times, because answers come so much faster when a destination is in mind. A traveler may stand an eternity at a crossroads if both forks are equally insignificant; but if that traveler is headed for a particular spot, the longest he will stop is to glance at a map to see which fork takes him where he wants to go.

So, often when I write, I have a theme in mind and I think: what character and/or characters are needed to explore this theme? Then I decide what events will help the characters move from their current, erroneous position to the correct, truth-affirming position. And this may seem overly simplistic, and perhaps even less artistic and more scientific an approach. And honestly, perhaps it is.

What this approach does not mean is that all of my works are allegorical -- this means this, and that means that. Because many of the characters and events do still explore different syntheses between two positions in their search for the "correct" one. And I only put "correct" in quotations because, let's face it, I'm 26, and have a lot of life left to learn. I was on the opposite side of the fence on many things, and eventually came to this side through thought and experience and learning.

And so I do not profess to be an "artist" the way painters and poets profess it; and I do not profess to try to capture the zeitgeist. Zeitgeists come and go, but Truth lasts forever. It is that which I seek, and that which inspires me.

See you later.