Where does your inspiration come from? Is it the vibrant colors in a treasured painting or the pulsating beat of your favorite rock band that gets your heart to pumping and makes your hands itch to pick up a paintbrush or guitar and produce your own masterpiece? Maybe you’re like me and find yourself surprised by a plethora of sensory delights that stir your imagination and inspires your creativity.

I find my greatest inspirations in literature. Amazing novels take me on journeys of imagination that open up new worlds to explore. They can make me laugh, cry, and empathize with people who start out as fictional characters and evolve into friends by the last page.

Poetry speaks to the soul and entreats me to be best version of myself that I can be. Nonfiction educates my mind, causes me to ponder new possibilities, and entreats me to ask, “What if?”

Histories and inspirational biographies reinforce my deep-seated belief that we can overcome life’s trials. We can persevere.

After years of tragedy and triumphs, Becky, the main character in my novel, Breaking TWIG, concludes that, “We all filter the realities of life through our own personal fears, individual experiences, and the human need to cling to hope despite the circumstances, regardless of the odds. And in doing so, we each determine our own truth.”

Inside the pages of a book is where I find the people, places, words, and ideas that inspire me to continually seek and reevaluate my own truth.

Deborah Epperson

The prints, “Dig”/Sadie Wendell Mitchell, artist and “The book worm and her favorite book”/ Will Houghton, are courtesy of the Library of Congress.   http://www.loc.gov/pictures

Christine Schimpff-Carbo

Inspiration can be elusive, but necessary at times for endeavors in the arts. And especially for a writer. No matter how good we are at sitting our butts down at our desks and computers and making that writing date happen, there are times when inspiration is needed to infuse what we’re doing with life and energy.
 
I missed the discussion on sacred places, but for me, it’s more than place that inspires; it’s the doing within the place that often energizes and gets my brain going. I came up with my idea for the first novel I wrote while driving to Seattle, the scenery of the mountains and the eastern plains of Washington flashing by. I was inspired to write my second novel while simply jogging on a county road near the Flathead River. For my third, my first mystery, I came up with the beginnings of my plot while biking around Whitefish Lake to rehabilitate my knee after two surgeries. My fourth, yet to be written, is currently being plotted from the spark fanned by lots of reading whenever I can fit it in. Other writers’ works of creation are fueling my fire.

The following are just a few of my top ways to lure the muse when I’m in need of inspiration:

1. Reading. Books, blogs, magazines, newspapers…

2. Exercising. Walking, hiking, jogging, biking or whatever else energizes and gets the blood flowing.

3. Visiting with other writers who are excited about their projects.

4. Going to a good movie and challenging myself to create characters just as interesting and with just as many roadblocks.

5. Surfing the net with the intent of looking for interesting ideas.

6. Visiting museums or craft shows and being in awe of all the other creative mediums.
My muse seems to be fickle, but if I can keep myself energized and entertained, she seems to come more often.
Here’s to keeping your muse visiting frequently!
Christine Schimpff-Carbo

Yesterday, at the VA’s Fort Harrison in Helena, I turned anxious thoughts to how illness makes characters sympathetic. Or does it? Happily, my husband is fine, but I’m still pondering how authors have given us ailing characters and how readers receive them.

    Start with opposites. Take Tiny Tim from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, he of “God bless us, every one!” fame. Readers love him. But, wait! With Richard III, Shakespeare created a hateful character, twisted in mind and body. The guy drowns little princes in wine vats. Modern readers, perhaps unlike less enlightened Elizabethan audiences, love Tim and hate Richard not because of their infirmities, but solely because of their behavior.

     But, for a protagonist readers can truly empathize with, I give you the title character of Ben Fountain’s, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Billy has a pounding migraine that plagues him through the entire day the novel covers. Who hasn’t been there? Billy is part of Bravo Company, soldiers whose heroic firefight, caught by an embedded reporter on video, results in their being invited to be part of the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day halftime program. It’s a surreal day, with Billy responding to everyone who asks if he needs anything if he could please have an Advil. Only when the day is winding down, the soldiers to be returned to Iraq, does Billy finally get the bottle, which he shares down the bleacher with the rest of Bravo Company. By then the reader has been begging, “Somebody give that kid something for his headache.

Sure, we shed tears over the deaths of innocents, and love to hate bad guys regardless of their appearance, but if I want a character my readers can truly identify with, I’ll just bestow an itch, a blister, or a relentless headache.

Karen Wills