Inspiration

(thanks to Sunday Scribblings)

I am awed when the following words escape a person's mouth directed at a writer or other artist: "Is it hard to come up with ideas?"

My thought: do you live in the world or what?

It's not finding ideas that's challenging, it's capturing them, holding them tight as they wiggle in your fingers--inspecting their hairy/feathered/scaled little sides before deciding...will this do?

Can I take one eye of newt and hair of one death-obsessed sister who will not let go of her lost brother, a pinch of cult worship and a romantic interest and turn it into a novel?

Can I take the man who cleans gutters in the neighborhood, with his wandering eye and missing fingers and find him a landscape where he means something to someone?

Can I transform my own personal dramas into story?

Inspiration is the easy part. Walking down the street I pass a woman with missing teeth dressed in a suit, holding a banana--I'm inspired! Working I encounter a person who speaks so softly I would have to kiss her cheek to hear her voice. Inspired!

JPR