People, especially my students, often ask me how I come up with all the ideas for my stories, and my answer to them is you can find ideas and inspiration everywhere.
And then they ask me what I mean by that.
So where do my ideas, or at least the inspirations, come from? Well, they come from:
- My nightmares,
- Pictures,
- The news,
- People,
- Odd or strange places,
- Things that scare me,
- Myths and fairy tales.
Look at the following picture and what do you see?
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| Cemetery in Cameron, Texas (picture by Annie Rachel Cole) |
Obviously,
I see an old grave with a metal fence around it. But is there anything
else there? What does your imagination tell you?
I
see a grave with a fence around it, and I wonder...is the fence meant
to keep people out, or is it meant to keep something in? Who or what is
buried there? How did they get there? Maybe there's a ghost who roams
the cemetery--the ghost of a woman who was buried alive.
I
remember driving by this very cemetery as a teenager, the only
difference was it was very much over grown with bushes and weeds, but
during winter you could get a glimpse of tombstones. This cemetery was
the inspiration for my short story 'No Rest for the Spirit'--a short
story about a woman who was buried alive and now haunts the area.
Ideas or inspiration for stories are everywhere.
Look around.
Listen.
And then ask yourself, WHAT IF?
