What Sparks Your Creativity and How Do You Harness It..?

Our creativity is inspired from the smallest sentence, an intriguing picture, dreams, overheard conversation, or a global or local news article. Writers have the ability to create a story from what most people would term as mundane into something wonderful. There are ‘links’ within our minds that expand the smallest titbit into a narrative. When asked, “Where do your stories come from?” – We struggle to explain the internal processes of our muse. Some authors have a particular genre they enjoy writing and this can assist with the answer. However, if you delve into more than one genre, it is harder to explain.

What obscure stimulus has sparked an idea for you?

No matter what system we use, an idea can grow exponentially once it takes hold. This is wonderful, of course, the only downfall being if we already have a bucketful of ideas waiting in the wings. Each clambers for our attention until we are forced to choose one over another. How this decision is made can be as intriguing and mystical as where the story came from. Some ideas are ‘stronger’ in our minds and are usually the ones we proceed with.

Have you experienced a story unwilling to stay quiet?

How do you approach new ideas? The writing of frantic notes, creating a plot arc or writing out character descriptions.

As a free flow author, I allow my narrative to grow naturally and allow any twists and turns in the characterization and plot to form without trying to make it conform to any preconceived idea. For the past year or so I have been working on two major novels, Willow Tree Tears (a western romance) and The Giving Thief (a suspense thriller). Obviously, having two vastly different genres has enabled me to swap from one to the other without melding them into some weird new genre! Progress has been good and feedback from critique partners has helped a great deal in the revision and editing process.

All was well until I awoke one morning a month or so ago, remembering a new children’s story from a dream. The basis of which I quickly jotted down, as we all know ideas are wisps in the wind more often than not. Now I have another project hankering for my attention. Luckily, with a few descriptions and thoughts noted, it was filed away and remains quiet for now, along with a Steampunk novel idea, which was created from a short piece created at a writers retreat as part of an exercise.