How to Find Inspiration

Inspiration is the hardest thing by which there is to come. People ask me all the time where I get my inspiration, and I really don't know what to tell them. I see something or hear something and I write about it. Sometimes I just feel like I have something to say. So I say it. If I don't say it, then I'm likely to go insane. Go insane or spontaneously combust—those are the two most likely options, I figure. I don't want to find out though. So I say what I have to say. I think it was Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, who said something along the lines of “I write for the same reason I breathe.” That's a fair statement, in my opinion.

My poetry is almost entirely based in human emotions. I like to write a lot of angry poems, typically ranting about some aspect of life. Writing is a good way to express anger in a healthy way. It frees your emotions; otherwise they're locked up inside until you blow up on the wrong person. It still always helps to yell “FUCK” at the top of your lungs sometimes though. Lock the car doors, roll up the windows, turn down the radio, inhale, and let that four-letter word flow from deep down. If you're leery about poetry, don't be. No one ever said it has to rhyme; abstract and incomprehensible metaphors are a thing of the past.

The fiction I write is a different story. You'll find a plethora of autobiographical references littered all throughout my fiction, especially my longer fiction. I pick out traits from myself, my friends, and my family and mold them into my characters. A significant amount of the names I use are the names of actual people in my life. My longer fiction though, all begins as a short story, or at least an idea for what is intended to only be a short story. Sometimes, the five pages just aren't enough. Sometimes even ten pages isn't enough.

My fiction is usually inspired by something I've seen or heard. I guess if I'm going to generalize it, it would be music where I get most of my inspiration. The first novel I started writing is called Birds, after the song by Kate Nash. It was originally going to be a short story based on the song “Ghost of Corporate Future” by Regina Spektor, but it soon became more than that.

A man walks out of his apartment,
It is raining, he's got no umbrella
He starts running beneath the awnings,
Trying to save his suit,
Trying to save his suit.
Trying to dry, and to dry, and to dry but no good

When he gets to the crowded subway platform,
He takes off both of his shoes
He steps right into somebody's fat loogie
And everyone who sees him says, "Ew."
Everyone who sees him says, "Ew."

That was the initial basis. But I wanted to write something based on Kate Nash's “Birds” too. So I fused all of the ideas together and started a novel. It is still unfinished, something like 10,000 words, I think. I haven't worked on it much. Ironically, I've lacked inspiration. It's a rom-com, I guess. I guess that's what you'd call it. It's actually pretty unique. It tells two stories simultaneously at the same time. Except the two stories about the same two people: one when they first met as children and the other when they reunite as adults. Rather than using flashbacks or telling the story of their youth and then jumping several years forward, the story alternates chapter to chapter. I think it's a pretty cool concept. I hope the publishers do too.

Most of my short stories are inspired by lines from songs too, I guess. Or at least their names are derived from songs: “Some Weird Sin”, “You Are My Best Friend (My Best Friend Is You)”, “...And There Was a Kid with a Head Full of Doubt”, “Don't Go Revenging in My Name”. Some are based on true events in my life though, like “This is the Story of London”, “Thanksgiving in London”, and “The Coaster”. Others are based on people: “You Can't Help But Be Romantic (About Baseball)” being about slugger Jim Thome and based on a quote from the film, Moneyball. That one is another I'm working on turning into a novel. I would like to be able to interview Mr. Thome myself for research, but so far, no luck—just another rejection, but from a different kind of agent this time. My completed novel, On the 5:15, is named after a song by The Who. It's based on a man I saw in a documentary on Woodstock. A Belgian guy who is actually now a pretty successful voice actor (I think he's a regular on South Park, actually); he came to America and on his very first day, he went to Woodstock. Incredible. His first day in America was at Woodstock. That's a story that needs to be told, I thought. So I wrote it. My character is Irish though, not Belgian. And he ends up owning a record shop in Chicago, not providing voices to cartoon characters.

I went to a Garrison Keillor book signing at Books and Co. in Dayton. Someone asked Mr. Keillor about this very subject. He told the kid, maybe a couple years younger than college freshman self at the time, to find inspiration in the people he sees every day: “Their lives will go unrecorded without you,” he said. That is a quote by which I live. If you want to write, but don't know what to write, just look around you. It's out there. Even if you live in a small town of only 750 people, like me, it is out there. You'll know it when you find it. Even the simplest of idea can create the most magnificent of story—you just have to write it.