Writer's Un-Blocked: What Inspires You?

Recently blogged about where I get my inspiration. This is about what inspires me. Now what inspires me is completely different from where I get my inspiration. Having inspiration is great, but I think being truly inspired means that you have elected to do something with that inspiration. You’ve decided to stop sitting around just thinking about your inspiration and have decided to turn it into something tangible, or danceable, or edible, or readable.

I think you have to want to do something with that inspiration- like write it down or film it, or whatever your medium is- instead of just thinking about it, or finding reasons to put if off.

Being inspired is just a matter of figuring out what’s important to you and just running with it. Even if seems silly and unimportant to others, it just matters how much this idea means to you and whether or not it’s important enough to put your whole self into it.

So, the question is: what inspires you?

Writer's Un-Blocked: Getting the Idea

Where do you get your inspiration? You wanna know where I get my ideas for writing? Simple: I steal it. Well, some of it…

Now, hold on. Before you go calling the cop on me, here is what I mean. I steal things to put in my books from everywhere and everyone. Bits of conversations, personality trait… physical features… like having large ears…

That’s not to say I’ve never had an original thought in my life, just that I believe that an author writes from his or her own personal understanding. If J. K. Rowling had never learned about witched and wizards, as in she was completely oblivious to that concept at all, we never would have had the HAPPY POTTER series.

I’ve heard people say that they don’t like to use “real” people for their writing, while I do. “Real” people are the kinds of characters I want. It’s more believable to me when I use certain traits and characteristic from my friends and family because they are the most “real” characters I know. And it’s those “Mary Sue” characters (for those of you who don’t know what a Mary Sue character is, it’s a character who is very common to others) for example Bella Swan, with her helpless, damsel in distress attitude and having Edward, a handsome superhuman, saving her all the time… it’s characters and events like that which keep us reading, because it those common characters and event with their own twists that makes the story real.

Stealing things from around you makes your writing more believable, because who and what is more real than the things and people you know?

Where do you get your inspiration?