First step PART II - Be Inspired

So in my last blog post I talked about where I think the idea of my novel came from.

While I believe I did a decent enough job of that, I think I missed something very important, and that is my guess as to why I have ideas in the first place.

So why do I have ideas?

I have ideas because I get inspired.

Which leads to the question. How does one get inspired?

And the answer is to be around whatever it is that you find inspiring!

This is a bit flippant, sure, but I honestly believe it is a useful approach as it is far easier to answer the question. "What do I find inspiring?" rather than the question "Where do I get ideas?"

For me, as I noted in my last blog post , my background, and my lived experiences are where I believe the core idea of my novel "Under The Full And Crescent Moon" came from. These are sources of inspiration that pretty much everyone has access to.

But specifically to me, I find that I am inspired heavily by absorbing the work of other people. To narrow it down I love narratives and stories, and even more precisely I love having a satisfying conclusion.

Whether the narrative comes from a movie, a novel, or a computer game, the joy I get from experiencing a well earned conclusion is a core part of who I am and a major source of inspiration.

Hell, I played through all the characters in Super Street Fighter II in single player mode just to see their ending cutscenes!

Another source of inspiration for me is people's ideas. I love podcasts, social media posts, blogs, articles, and non-fiction generally for precisely this reason. I believe reading someone's thoughts is the best way to learn what they think.

But that's just me. Everybody's different and you might be inspired by nature, or travel, or talking with people, or sports, or music. There's no wrong answer here and I think one of the joys of growing up in a society with a lot of opportunity is the ability to explore and find what it is that inspires and moves you.

So... what is it that inspires you?

As an aside, this is one of the many reasons that I am beyond horrified by what is happening in Palestine, and Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. People, and most terribly children, are being prevented from finding what it is that moves them for no other reason than greed for land, and resources.

I have to note that I am lucky in the sense that my inspirations gave me a lot of free research into my desire to write this novel. Once I got the idea (probably based on my lived experiences), I had a lifetime filled with absorbing stories from books and games to guide the narrative, and learning ideas from all over to help me with the research.

Which brings me back to what the next post should be about, research.