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Story Ideas – Inspiration at Home
By Deb Gallardo
Get Inspired To Write With Your Grandfather Clock
By: Andrei Myers
You look outside the window and you realize it is raining. The wind is blowing hard against the oak tree out in your backyard and the tree dances with the tune of the wind. You pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit behind the desk of your study and find yourself staring at your grandfather clock, which stands across the room. You cast a glance at the keyboard of the computer in front of you and your mind wanders off into another place and another time.
Get in the Mood for Writing
Many people love to write and that is not just a mere fact. However, to write is no easy task. You need to know what you write and you need to feel what you write. Most of the time, there are just certain circumstances and moods that draw you to start scribbling or tapping those keys on the keyboard. Stories can just pop out of your head from the things you see everyday, things that when put together with the right setting and mood, could inspire you to write.
A grandfather clock exudes an aura of elegance, grace, and a certain ambient mood to any room it is situated in. With a grandfather clock and the right literary catalyst, you will find yourself transported in a world vivid with color and life, a world only your imagination can create and bring to life.
Give It Its History
When you stare at an object, you sometimes find your imagination starting to run wild with questions and small scenarios of things that you think relate to it, scenarios that you think might have happened well in the past that a thing had definitely bore witness to. Or it could also bring to mind memories that you had buried somewhere in your subconscious which only manifests itself when you let your imagination run loose.
Writers often write from memories, experiences of others, or from things. Many of the best writers have written stories about events and people that revolved around a certain thing. Nicholas Sparks wrote “Message in a Bottle” and “The Notebook”, and those two were worldwide bestsellers. There is a big chance that he was inspired to write such stories because he saw a story, some kind of life behind those ordinary things. Maybe you can do that too with the things that you see in your very own home like your grandfather clock.
Maybe the sound of the blowing wind and the oak tree dancing outside your window starts the ball rolling. Maybe those inspire you to write how your protagonist is, what his or her life is about, and what brought about this memory. Maybe you, as the writer, are looking through your character’s eyes as he stares out of his window and sees the event unfold before him. Maybe you, as you think like your character, remember a memory that happened, a memory triggered by the weather outside, the wonderful smell of steaming hot coffee, and the steady ticking of the pendulum in the grandfather clock. Maybe the steady ticking allows you to start a mental pace of the story as it unfolds in your head, a story that might be your very own bestseller.
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9 Comments »
April 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Great post…looking forward to coming back to keep my creativity flowing. Love the image at the top of your blog. Glad to be with you at the CWCC.
Warmly,
Donna
http://www.donna-mcdine.blogspot.com ~ Write What Inspires You!
http://www.donnamcdine.com
April 11th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Hi, Your site has great information and as someone trying to refocus my freelance career, I appreciate all of your insight. Thanks.
Blessings,
Terri
terri.forehand@gmail.com
http://heartfeltwords4kids.blogspot.com
April 11th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Interesting article. It got me to thinking about how the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I heard the snap, crackle, and pop of our huge silver maple tree limbs as the wind ripped some shingles off of our roof the other day. Then as suddenly as it began all was calm.
Thank you for posting a great article.
Jewel Sample
http://jewelsamples.blogspot.com/
April 11th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
On school visits, a major component of my workshops and presentations are about where writers get ideas from. This article contains a lot of good advice about where to find inspiration as a writer.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Donna,
Thanks for your kind words about my blog. As for the header graphic, I’m proud to say I created it myself. Took me the better part of a day and many more hours afterwards tweaking it (can you spell “anal retentive?”) until I had it how I wanted it, but it’s pretty much what I was looking for. Glad you like it! Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Deb
April 12th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Terri,
I’m glad you found some ideas here. That’s what this little blog is all about. You may also be interested in this article, in which I bare my soul about the frustrations of learning Internet Marketing on a shoestring.
Thanks for reading!
Deb
April 12th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Jewel,
Great images in your comments, nice sensory data, too. Good one! Glad Andrei’s article was useful to you and got your writer’s “juices” flowing. That’s what this blog is for – writing inspiration.
Thank you for reading and commenting!
Deb
April 12th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Simon,
I appreciate your comments. In fact, the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” was the prime motivation for this blog and the impetus behind the ebook I’m getting ready to release. Many of those who ask this question are wannabe writers – not exactly aspiring, but they’ve thought about it and have a hankering to write … someday.
My hope is that by helping people DISCOVER the ideas that are all around them, that many who dream of writing will actually START writing because they have something to say now. Usually, it just takes a spark to get the imagination fired up. From there, an idea can go anywhere.
As a published author, you know that the initial idea isn’t enough, but it’s where the writing process begins, and that’s the very place the majority of people get stuck. I’ll leave the job of developing ideas into viable plots for others to teach. (Lots of Writer’s Digest books on the subject already!) It’s outside the focus of this blog.
Thanks for stopping by. And thank you for commenting!
Deb
April 12th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Thanks to Suzanne Lieurance of the National Writing for Children’s Center and all my friends from her critique group for creating a “blog chain.” It’s all about getting eyeballs in front of our words. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to the Internet – more’s the pity (LOL).
Suzanne is a writing coach and hosts a weekday BlogTalkRadio show at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, called Book Bites for Kids. Below are some of her links.
http://www.writingforchildrencenter.com/
http://www.writingforchildrencenter.com/book-bites-for-kids/
There you can sign up for her daily email message “The Morning Nudge,” a must-read motivational, well … nudge each morning to help you get a little writing done. That’s one email I never miss.
If you’re an aspiring children’s writer, you can also find information on her Children’s Writers’ Coaching Club, which is growing by leaps and bounds these days. There is a wealth of information available, plus a weekly critique of writing submitted, as well as interviews with working writers.
We all need that kick in the seat of the pants, sometimes. Suzanne can provide that, too, can’t you, Suzanne? LOL