where does your inspiration come from?

As a writer, I'm always looking for inspiration for my next story: news stories, friends' stories, overheard conversations, dreams, family stories, "what if" questions. I get a lot of ideas, and a lot of ideas get shelved. But I've never been inspired the same way twice - I can't look for inspiration to come the way it came before. Each story I've written began from a unique, unexpected seed.

One story stands out in particular, a story inspired from my incurable people-watching. I can clearly trace it to the moment in time when I thought, "I want to write a story about that." Now, probably five years later, it is "The Yellow Pantsuit," the title story of my thesis:

About five years ago, around this time of year, I sat in a sandwich cafe with my husband for lunch one Saturday - the kind of upscale fast-food cafe that's intentionally plopped in the middle of a busy shopping district. Lots of wealthier people shop there. We were just there for the food.

Anyway, I watched an older couple enter the store and order their lunch. Their demeanor toward each other and everybody else struck me as telling. They were aloof, entitled - yet domestically aloof with each other, by which I assumed they'd been together a long time.

The husband - a tall, thin, elegant man - sat down at a table as far away from other patrons as possible, while the wife - short, round, and ostentatious - ordered at the counter. She brought their food to the table and did all the talking, serious and curt, while he did a lot of staring out the window. All of a sudden, she began to choke on her sandwich, and he seemed unfazed. Not a hint of surprise, or concern - he didn't move fast to do anything for her. He eventually held her hand and continued eating and looking out the window while she sputtered and coughed and turned shades of red. After a few minutes, she recovered on her own and continued her monologue, both of them acting like nothing at all had happened.

Their behavior was so surprising to me, so fascinating, that I couldn't forget it. I began writing by imagining myself in the husband's place. What was going through his mind while he stared out the window and pretty much ignored his wife and everyone else? What does he think of his wife? What did he think of her when they met, and why has that changed? The story has gone through several revisions, but it began and remains as his inner monologue while he watches his wife order and eat and talk and choke and talk again. It's my advisor's favorite story, and it was a lot of fun to imagine and write and revise, which is a rare gift in my experience.

I'm always curious about the genesis of other people's creative ideas - whether it's writing, web design, photography, sewing, music, etc. In what ways do creative ideas occur to you? What do you do to foster and watch and listen for inspiration?

writer's block--

You try to write every day--you take off work so you can really focus on writing, and the most you get all day is one new paragraph. 


You've written for a month-and-a-half and produced six drafts, some a page, some five or six pages, none of which feels right. 


You realize you have no idea what you're doing. 


Some people call this writer's block, but there's got to be a better term for it. 

From my own experience (see above), writer's block is synonymous with self-condemnation, a crisis of confidence. And it doesn't apply only to writers... Artists. Musicians. Parents. Designers. Entrepreneurs. Teachers. Plumbers. Mentors. Someone going through a "mid-life" crisis. We look at what we've done and see that it doesn't amount to what we want from ourselves. So we try again, and when that doesn't work we begin to doubt who we are or what we do.

I don't have the be-all, end-all remedy, but I can tell you what helped me. I stopped striving and had faith. I took Ira Glass' words to heart.

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. . . .

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. . . . 

It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile.”

Listen to yourself: do you really care about making what you do matter? Do you care about making it great? Then you've got what it takes. Every person on this earth has the spark of a creator within them, somewhere between their heart and mind. Whatever it is you do. You are an artist, or have the capacity to be.

One thing that fosters artistry is child-like curiosity. Wonder. Coming at a project from every angle. What gets in the way of artistry? Striving--trying, grudging, contending. Instead of letting the inner spark ignite and swinging the doors wide open to let the winds of imagination fan it into flame. Which takes repeated, regular practice.

Once I got through those six drafts that weren't going anywhere, I tried a seventh. I don't think I could have gotten to the seventh without the first six dead-end drafts. But I stopped trying to write the story I thought would be good to write. I allowed my imagination to illuminate a path I couldn't have conjured and the road kept opening up before me. A little at a time, just a couple of footsteps ahead, but the flame was living, it was breathing, and I was following.

copyright Sarah Shaffer 2011