Monthly Archives: October 2013

Inspiration…

What’s your go-to inspiration? Does something in particular flip your switch, from the everyday patterns of work, eat, sleep, to being an artist or a writer?

For some I guess it could be a piece of music, or watching an old favourite movie. Others might stimulated by their garden, a walk in the park, eating a food that they love or revisiting a book they adored as a child.

Once in a while, I need a switch – say if I’ve had a bad dream the night before, or a big heap of red tape paperwork that has nothing to do with my creativity. One of my go-to switches is this video on Youtube, which someone made to go with the song ‘Halcyon On and On’ by Orbital. Not only is it a great piece of music, but the images are stunning, and it completely clears away all of the white noise of everyday life for me. And makes me want to get back to writing that masterpiece – I’ve just passed the 17,000 words mark on the latest one 🙂

 

Locations…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Researching images for my next story, I came across these beautiful photographs of Wyoming on a site called Morgue File. They look almost unreal.

Thank goodness for photography and for the internet – I think about how small and insignificant my knowledge would be, relying only on the words of others for what they have seen. I suppose as a creative writer weaving fictional tales, part of the job is to do justice to the wonders of the world that only a privileged few have seen and recorded for the rest of us to enjoy.

IMG_1803

Writing playlists…

Do you need music while you write? I don’t – but I have to say it certainly helps.

Over the weekend I experimented with different tunes from my MP3 player. Girls Aloud, Britney Spears and Sophie Ellis-Bextor came out on top as some of the most appropriate. The only thing that bothers me is that the songs are so short! I do need a whole album’s worth of songs that will keep me writing all day, if I’m going to depend on a playlist for motivation.

Classical helps – Holst’s ‘Planets Suite’ is a good example for my writing mood in general. It’s not specific enough for my genre though.

Here’s one I came across in my MP3 player and had completely forgotten about – it’s called ‘Everything’ and was so appropriate I wrote 5000 words in one day… 🙂