Authors know that feeling very well: there are days when it feels you can’t write a decent word, days in which it’s so difficult to find the inspiration – the drive to write your book – that you think you’ll actually never finish it.
What do I do in those days? How do I find or maintain my inspiration?
I have a photographic memory, I know this. Probably because of that I can imagine stories related to a photo pretty fast.
I call it “Words for a Photo” and I have a tumblr blog about it, that is mostly about erotic shorts.
Every day I force myself to write a short tale there. There is usually no plot, it’s just something “happening” in that photo, it’s only a description of the photo itself, a before and an after. It takes around half an hour each day to write those 1000 words. The quality is not the best: they are not edited, nor proofread,.but it’s more an excercise for me than a gift to my readers.
But if I can kill two birds with a stone, why not? I’m pleased to share.
My daily inspiration
That said: where do I get the daily inspiration? Mainly Google Images. I choose a keyword, I choose a photo; I write about it.
Let’s try to do it. We’ll keep it simple because today I already wrote my daily short.
- Go to Google Images.
- Write a query. I’m putting “alps landscapes” there, but you can choose whatever you want as long as it is descriptive enough.
- Choose a photo from the results. Just choose one you like, don’t think about it too much.
- Now look at it. I chose this:
- Now imagine. If it’s a landscape, you can be a bird, you can be a rock, you can be an external narrator. If you choosed a photo that describes a situation you can imagine what lead to it, and what will happens after it.
I’ll write something about my image.
They had been walking for two days already and there seem to be no end to it. Invisible paths had lead them to a pass, then to a valley, than another pass again. There was no sign of civilization, no sign of a place to sleep nor eat properly.
Two slices of dried meat and some stale bread, that’s what was left in their backpack, nothing more. Neither of them dared to share the only thought that slowly currupted their mind: did we get lost? Are we going to die here?
And still, when they finally reached another ridge of a mountain they were trying to climb, the sight in front of their eyes repaid them of all the fatigue, all the missed lunches, all the mosquito bites they had suffered.
That place was simply heaven on Earth.
They got naked and bathed in the fresh lake, then lay on the ground in the sun, and laughed.
Both of them had recognized the peak in front of their eyes. They were safe.
