Inspired by life by Eric Beetner

What inspires you in your day-to-day life, something that influences your writing? 

Honestly, I wish I knew. Inspiration is a funny thing to me. I find myself thinking of stories or characters quite a lot. Too much, maybe. I was that kid in class labeled a “Daydreamer”. I see someone on the street and I want to know their story. I hear something innocuous about a neighbor and I want the anecdote to keep going, to spin out to unexpected places. I can’t honestly say there is a thing that doesn’t inspire me.

I recently finished a short story based on a prompt, which I enjoy. I like the restraints on a themed story whether it be setting or a person. When the page is blank, where do you start? And I think that’s the secret to inspiration, the difference between writers and “normal” people. If you sit and wait for a prompt, you won’t write much. If you can stare at a blank, white page and find inspiration there, then you just might a writer.

Usually one story inspires another. When I read, it can rev the engine of creativity and make me start thinking of stories I wouldn’t have otherwise. Same goes for seeing a movie or a painting. Newspapers (remember those) are always great sources of inspiration if only to remind you that truth is stranger than fiction. Or at the very least, your wild and crazy idea will likely be outdone by the real world, so go with the wild idea in your head. Nothing is too unrealistic.

Once the river is flowing with ideas, new ones come along because our minds are already in a creative mode. We’re already inspired to write. That’s why so often writers can get distracted by the new, shiny idea that comes along in the middle of writing an idea that was shiny and new last week. 

Inspiration is so intangible that since the beginning of storytelling we’ve assigned a mythical status to it. The Muse is somehow the thing that inspires us to write stories and invent whole people from our imagination. The truth is, that Muse lives inside us all. You need only tap into it, usually through observing the world around you. 

Humans are endlessly fascinating, as well as frustrating, infuriating, beautiful, ugly, rude, polite and on and on. We’re all characters in one way or another. If you look at the world like a page already filled and waiting for the stories there to be plucked out and made into your own tale, then inspiration is all around us every day.