Where Does Inspiration Come From?
by jeffvandermeer on Nov.13, 2009, under Jeff VanderMeer
I just spent today driving up from Los Angeles to Monterey, along the coastal CA-1 North route. In the morning, the light was thin and wane. By mid-day, clouds had occluded the sun and made the light murky. Early afternoon brought a sunshine that illuminated everything like a painting by Turner, making each landscape around each bend stand out in sharp relief. By late afternoon, a richness had invaded those same landscapes as the sun began to set.
Just driving through these amazing coastal settings, let alone stopping alone the way, has already inspired all kinds of thoughts for future stories. The texture, the way the scrub and earth pick up richness and lose it, the verdigris of undergrowth racing down the side of mountains, the stark boldness of the blue sea, the fireworks explosions of golden reeds appearing between tufts of dull green grass and stunted trees–all of this combined with the variety of sea smells, the kelp and shells and sand black and light on the beaches almost overwhelms the mind, but also fortifies it.
Whether it’s characters or settings or something else entirely, I know this drive through unfamiliar territory will crop up in my fiction. It brings to mind as well something the writer Jon Courtney Grimwood said on a panel once, about having to visit a place in order to write about it. This may be true of novels set in real locations, but it’s also true of fantasy novels. Today, I picked up a hundred different entry points to story.
For anyone reading who creates things, whether stories or something more physical–what kinds of catalysts spark your imagination?
November 13th, 2009 on 10:36 am
Anything. I was inspired to write a short story based on a single line in a book I was reading. Certain days, when the weather in just on the verge of inclement (especially in autumn, you get that heavy sense from the weather; it’s THERE and it almost feels alive). Situations I’m in, ridiculous people or well-balanced normal people. I dunno, I just get ideas and try to jot them down.
November 13th, 2009 on 12:35 pm
Adam:
I find what I read inspires me quite a bit. So much so, if I feel like I’m stuck or laboring on a piece, I take a break, and go read.
November 13th, 2009 on 2:38 pm
James Joyce kept what he called a “journal of epiphanies”. Which is not to say that everything contained therein was life-changing realization. Rather, he simply wrote down things that struck him, no matter what they struck him as. The thinking was, if something is worth writing about, it ought to jump out. I think there’s still truth to that. Not to say that everyone needs to constantly jot down interesting things that happen to them; but rather, that life provides countless bits of inspiration. The trick, I’ve found, is not getting inspired, but honing that inspiration, and crafting it in to something worthwhile.
November 13th, 2009 on 3:14 pm
Those landscape inspirations are one reason I know I’ll have to keep traveling for as long as I’m writing. Things observed do very much go into an image memory bank, often to emerge later to be spliced into other settings and locations, real and imagined. Nothing inspires the fantastic like the world we live in.
November 13th, 2009 on 6:08 pm
Images. I think my creative brain is very attuned to images - I’ll see something and it will get stuck in my head. A drift of sunlight on early morning grass… rusted girders on a bridge leaking red tears… the shadowed interior of an abandoned building… the unreality of fog crossing a street… a too-empty street…
Vivid images, particularly ones that are suggestive and make me say why? or how? Images that suggest something different, that serve as narrative points of departure.
The images that haunt me, that I have trouble shaking, are usually the ones that end up shaping stories.
The other thing is titles… Odd titles often pop into my head, odd juxtapositions of words, and the contrast will start me thinking about how those words could be aligned in a story.
November 14th, 2009 on 2:39 pm
Creativity is not in my genetic makeup unfortunately but I must comment on Jeff’s artistic visual imagery. I’ve not read your work to date but I will now just to see if it lives up to this description which actually had me seeing the coast with you.