I never look for inspiration. It always finds me – usually at unexpected times or in strange situations. It’s why I try to keep a small notebook or journal handy so that I can jot thoughts down when they occur. This isn’t always possible, however, like the time I was curling in a mixed league and had a great story idea while I was supposed to be sweeping. The skip wasn’t very happy with me. I’ve gotten random ideas from walking in nature, people watching at the mall or airport, in church (I know, I know… I should have been paying attention to the sermon), while taking a shower, listening to music, cooking dinner… just about anywhere. I usually compile all these ideas in a word document once I find the time, but a notebook or even just a scrap of paper work in the moment.
Here are a few examples.
– I thought of the title for my book My Mother the Man-Eater while in the shower. The actual characters came out of playing ‘The Sims’ on the computer.
– A random song playing on the radio while I was driving inspired my book Play it Again. (I can’t actually remember what the song was anymore.)
– And the Beat Goes On was inspired when I was teaching my own children about creation vs. evolution when we homeschooled.
– I incorporated a combination of things when I wrote Wind Over Marshdale. The setting is my own hometown in Saskatchewan, but some of the characters are composites of people I’ve met in my many moves. (I met adult twin sisters in one town named Marni and Mirna and knew I had to use those names someday.) I was also inspired by several discussions with some of my First Nations friends who were trying to reconcile their Christian faith with certain aspects of native culture. Where is the line drawn between the cultural and the spiritual?
– I was having a conversation one day with one of my daughters about the trend of blaming one’s parents for all of one’s adult problems. For some reason I thought of Captain Hook from Peter Pan and thought it would be funny to write a play with Captain Hook as a neurotic female who felt inadequate because her mother always wanted a boy. Hook’s Nemesis is the result.
I don’t think I will ever run out of ideas. So many books, so little time!
