Inspiration!

You've got a game ankle? And you throw Dwarves into things? You sure do things differently in Toronto, Tonto!

Well, sometimes it's just a phrase that I've heard. I hear someone say something, and end up using it as a theme for a piece. Sometimes I get my ideas from reading others. Poems? At Wild City Writers' Workshop this afternoon (the virtual one in Toronto), someone gave a whole spiel on flowers and there were 5 lines in her essay that made a perfect poem. When I was reading Ursula Hegi - Stones in the River - I couldn't help throwing dwarves into things I wrote for a while after - sometimes when my game ankle is really bad, I end up creating people who are lame in a short story. I guess I'd have to say it's life that inspires me. Thanks for that question - it's very constructive.

I get inspired by scenarios that I see in life which have a certain human quality that defies me to put it into words. I once saw an Italian woman on a small beach in Argentario who was incredibly well dressed, even in a swimming costume. She had huge pearls and a very ornate, structured, multi-coloured costume on. Also, a sheer sarong type thing wrapped around her. She wore kitten heels, and had that very wrinkly, dark dark brown skin you get from a life time of sun-bathing. She was in her fifties I reckon, and to begin with I thought she was with this very young man because he was taking loads of photos of her, and she was draping herself over the rocks and posing fifties film star style, with her hands pretily under her face, sometimes on her back with her legs arranged, sometimes on her side, I mean, this woman knew so many poses it was unbelievable! The weird thing is, when the boy gave her the camera and wandered off, and she asked another man to take her picture, I realised that she was pathologically asking everybody around her to take her picture while she did this crazy posing. All the time, smiling and preening. She asked me, but I must have had some kind of recognition in my eyes, because she quickly and defensively took the camera away and found some other people. Who was this woman? Used she to be a film star and developed a kind of illness where she needs to be adored all the time? If there was a way in which I could link up all these mad characters and interludes into one story or film, I would do it. I feel as if they are somehow showing themselves to me, or I am drawn to these strange mirrors of 'normality'. The way in which society seems sometimes to be a series of people looking at each other for clues as to how they should be behaving, and then in their attempts to generate sameness and be happy at the same time, sometimes getting it wrong, is inspirational to me.

Mine generally come as a little nugget - what if a girl ran over someone who had something valuable, but didn't know what to do with it (Cinnamon and the Mystery); what if someone suddenly thought their mum wasn't their mum but had kidnapped them as a young child (Kidnap); what if your boss asked you to murder him (Bored Games) ? Then I let them kick around in my head for a week or so. If I start writing too quickly, the story tends to be forced. I start writing once the paragraphs are actually starting to vocalise in my mind, that I find myself writing down fragments on the back of envelopes or on napkins. Of course, they don't all work on paper and sometimes an idea that seemed brilliant just fails to come alive.

I'm not sure where I get my inseration from. Sometimes its triggered by pmt! Advisors say to read and read and read again, but I don't know if anyone else feels like me but I am always worried that when I write I remember other peoples work that has long since been dumped in the dark recesses of my mind. And I am scared I will copy it. Some will say it limits the writing in some way. So I do not read very often. However looking at the five best books section I have picked up some recomendations and bought a couple. so you never know. A

I get inspired by tons of stuff, music inspires me alot, but alot of my stuff is from my life (which has been an extremely bumpy twenty-five years) i can get really deep sometimes about the world around me and then i can get inspired by the bizarre actions of my less-than-bright border collie!!! It comes from wherever it comes!