As a newly signed author, I still blush profusely when I tell people I’m going to be published. Then, almost 100% of the time, they’ll ask, “Where do your ideas come from?”
For me, all over the place! Dreams, songs, movies, trips, or conversations. A glimpse of something that needs revealing – and I’m there…
I have a passion for tragic love stories. Maybe it comes from growing up as an Air Force kid – travel is an inspiring tool. Maybe it comes from spending a lot of my childhood in the community theaters in which may parents performed. Or maybe it’s because I have a heightened sense of imagination. I like to live in my head. Some of the best conversations i’ve ever had were with characters… Is this a good thing? I’m not going to analyze! 
My Greek series started with a song. This song (before being tied in to the Water for Elephants trailer) stirred such vivid images that I HAD to put them on paper. Thank you Florence! And once I did, Medusa’s story was born. In the time it took me to drive home from my critique group (the amazing Shake A Spear ladies that are the reason I stuck to it) in Dallas, I was bursting with the need to write.
Tragic? No doubt. We’re talking Medusa. BUT, beautifully so . Of course, you’ll have to read it to determine that for yourself 
So, tell me – fellow writer’s and artists – where do you get your inspiration??
Tags: books, Ideas, inspiration
The idea behind one of my favorite stories I’ve ever written came reading a book on gambling in the American West. The owner of one gambling establishment would throw coins to kids standing outside of his gambling hall in the mornings. I got to wondering what would happen to one of those boys if he had fight to get those coins in the dirt and dust just to be able to feed himself and his ailing mother. Got two books out of that scene.
I’m like you. I take inspiration from everywhere, my favorite though is people watching. People are so interesting. Great post!
Thanks for visiting Rachel! Airports and shopping malls are my fave places to people watch. It’s not always pretty, though
Wow! Thank you for sharing Alexis – now I want to know all about that boy, too. And I love that kind of driving need to know. It, in itself, can inspire!
My ideas come from so many places. Something Handsome says. Something I saw or experienced. Or I have just sat down and said I am going to write about this and did.
I’m getting much better about the sitting down and writing intentionally part. Ideas are the easy part, right?
Ideas are everywhere! I once got a whole plot just by seeing a cop car drive into a hospital parking lot. I also get a lot of inspiration from movies & tv shows. I’ll come up with fan fiction ideas and then they get transformed into their own stories.
My ideas come from all over the place. And I can’t stop them long enough to be as disciplined in writing as you are, Sasha.
I guess I’m not different at all when it comes to finding the inspiration. As my blog description says, I do like to explore fruther on a forbiden love that ended in tragedy (sort of like R & J) then I like to give them the chance. To imagine what would their love be like had it not been forbiden and they were free to love each other. Just like in my debut novel “Bonded by Crimson” where the heroine dicovers her life mate is the very same man whose tragic life story had her fascinated since her childhood and she forever imagined what it would be like to meet him. Then she did and he’s her boss.
Some ideas I get from movies or books. I think ok that was nice but what if … Some come from my dreams (or fragments only) and some oh, I don’t know, they just pop in my head. News and headlines I read.
It’s fun though, isn’t it? The way ideas come to life?
Nice to meet you Zrinka! I love re-imagined romantic tragedies too!
Congratulations on the debut, I’ll have to read it!
Feel free to check mine out when it comes out later this year – Medusa, A Love Story.
I take my inspiration from everything. It is such a crazy world full of interesting people.
Inspiration comes from every aspect of life. It comes from dreams, music, movies, the news, my crazy-hectic job, and too many resources to list. I carry notebooks and utilize my phone’s voice recorder (yes, I’m a dork!) to keep up with ideas. My office has been taken over by post-it notes, stray napkins with scribbled dialoge and scenes on them and all sorts of random scraps of paper. It’s a madhouse for sure.
I’m like most writers, finding ideas from everywhere and jotting down ideas on everything in sight, including envelopes, sticky notes and even paper towel if nothing else is within reach. I then transfer that idea onto my computer for later use. One of the best and worst places for inspiration for me is dreams. I’ll wake and write down a wonderful idea (at 3 in the morning) and when I read it after my morning caffeine I realize it was a bit tilted. But maybe with some tweaking…!
Some of the ideas I’ve gotten have come from the oddest sources. A man I’ve seen at the train station is the inspiration for a hero; an award that came to our office is a murder weapon; an old family recipe is used as a method of delivering poison, the club my grandmother belonged to sparked the idea for a cozy mystery series (both in the same book!); a couple of songs sparked plots for 2 stories. The list is endless!
I’m like you, Sasha, everything inspires me; however, I get my best ideas while driving in the car!
My characters drive the bus. I’m more like a glorified typist for all of them. The only control I have, and very little of it, I might add, is that they have apartments in my head. When they are not needed, I lock them in for a while. But sometimes, they get out. Oh, the chaos!
For me it’s long drives, for new story ideas or if I’m stuck on a certain scene it almost never fails. When I’m driving down a long beautiful Georgia country road, the characters start talking, my mind starts whirling and I’m newly inspired. Sounds like a country song huh! *smiling*
Hi Sasha,
Just like you I get ideas for books from everything, usually in the shower. I have a new idea for a book yesterday that was from a television show I watched. The kids zeal and determination, made me think what if…and off I went. Great post.
Gotta say, a lot of my books come from other books, movies, that kind of thing. It hits me, I wanna write a book like…blah, blah, blah, and then boom, it all comes together in my very unique vision. Real life helps some. I should prolly spend more time there.
One example. In the 90′s, I thought we needed a new Star Wars. So I came up with an end of the universe scenario involving a fourteen-year-old hispanic kid, a Gikuyu middle-aged woman from colonial Africa, the Teamaster from a Japanese folktale, and an Indian girl from 15th century Tamil Nadu. Oh, and an ancient evil, perverted sorceror who’s been evil and perverted for so long, it’s grown boring. Throw it all together, not Star Wars at all, but Star Wars was the inpspiration. I’m kooky that way.
Okay – so you’ve totally got my attention. The name of this book would be?
I get my ideas while I run in the morning. Nothing like being outside on the trails, and plotting the next scene in a book to distract you from the pain!
Jodi Thomas says that when anyone asks this question, she wants to say, “Well where did yours go?” Haha. I’ll get an idea from song lyrics or a random thought, and then I’ll start to see the characters & a story forms.