the inspiration osterizer

[rae121452]

there have been a lot of threads asking how one gets their inspiration. i was thinking about that earlier in relation to my latest story and the path to it amazed even me.

over a year ago, i was reading a review of a new biography of e. m. forster which mentioned "a room with a view". i haven't read that novel in at least 50 years but i retain the rudiments of the plot. the review also discussed forster's closeted homosexuality and that got me thinking about how the plot of the novel related to his gayness and if there was a veiled gay basis for it. from there, i began thinking about the title "a room with a view". what would a virginal young english girl see looking out that window? i envisioned her viewing a satyr in the woods that no one else had seen. after seeing it a number of times, she goes out to follow it. it leads her to a group of satyrs. orgy ensues. no one believes her when she returns, she meanwhile has become sexually liberated by the experience.
then, i wondered if that would work with a young english man. i began to think around that idea and decided that a young english man probably wouldn't go following. an american might, though.
but why would an american be in edwardian italy.......he'd more likely be in post ww1 italy!
from that point, the plot of my current story took off.
it practically wrote itself and i was sure that it wouldn't be well received as it had a certain "fantasy" slant to me.
so, anyway, after over a year of mulling the idea over, it finally gave birth.

a few sentences in a magazine article led to it all.

 

[NotWise]

Quite a few of my stories steep for months to years before I work on them. The story I'm working on now has been cooking in the back of my mind for a year and a half or so.

Typically I have an inkling of a story, or a goal I set, and I wait 'till a little flesh builds around the bones. Eventually I run out of patience and start writing the story whether I know all the details or not. Those details come to life when I'm faced with the Mother of Invention, and not before.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Like NotWise, I have stories on my disk that I started and ran out of gas on.

What inspires me?

Pictures, songs, people I meet, people I know, situations I have been in, places I have worked, places I have been. Things that I have done. Things I have created for other purposes. Something someone post here on Lit. in the threads.

Right now I'm working on a story that started out as a short story about a loving wife. It was just supposed to be a quicky, but the characters have taken it someplace else. It's now a 3 part story with at least 5 chapters in each part.

I have over 22,000 words now and don't expect to finish until sometime next week. Sometimes the ideas come from the characters in the story.

 

[Jada59]

Pretty much anything can get me to writing. Once, it was blossoms on a cherry tree. Another time it was a magnolia tree and a Koi pond.

Once, I was standing outside on a deck, overlooking the ocean. It was dark outside but in the moonlight, I could see two lovers, splashing in the water, kissing. My mind took it from there and suddenly they were stripping off their clothing and having sex in the waves while I was standing there in diaphanous lingerie, slowly letting my fingers wander all over my body and wondering if they could see me. The reality of the situation was just the two of them kissing but my overly active imagination took it from there.

Sometimes it is the mere flash of a memory that brings on a story. That little bit that really was and all the ways it could have been.

And once it was actually something written by a male friend. He had written a dirty little ditty about me behind my back. He claimed I had the highest sex drive of anyone he knew and so he wrote some silly little song about how I did it with the door knobs in my house! He was so impressed with himself that he had been singing it for mutual friends who thought it was funny. Word got back to me about it and I asked him to sing it.

At first he was mortified that I knew of it, but he did sing it. Not only did he have me using the door knobs for sexual gratification, but any and all other knobs in my house, including the ones on my dresser and the finials on my brass headboard. It was quite comical.

I then drove him straight over to my house, put on some lingerie, then marched him around the house, attempting to line up my crotch with the various objects he mentioned in his song. Not one of them was the right level to work for me. I guess he hadn't thought that one through very well when he wrote the tune.

I can't say that I blamed him as I did and still do have a very high sex drive and I have used various items around the house for sexual stimulation, but this did get my mind wandering and it made some good fuel for a story.

 

[Hypoxia]

Inspiration is easy.
Perspiration is hard.