My Inspiration

My inspiration comes from three main sources. Nature, Music and my Dreams.

A mix of my dreams and people I meet/my friends are who generally inspire a character for me. There are characteristics my friends have, certain experiences they have been through or silly quirks that will sometimes stick out to me and I'll want to attribute them to one of my characters. Presently, my character Orion from my thesis class is based on one of my old best friends from when I was in high school. Their physical characteristics are similar and their personalities are pretty spot on. I also have a lot of random dreams about random people in random places that usually inspire the characters I write about. My character, Sasha, originated in a reoccurring dream I used to have about a beautiful Indian (not Native) girl who was blind which made her eyes a pale gray/blue color. Her general stubborn personality I derived from one of my friends, Manasi, who lives in Indian and is very hard-headed.

Music is always really inspiring for me when it comes to creating and writing a scene. Every scene in my novel has a certain song that narrates it. I usually combine music and nature inspiration together 6 mornings out of the week when I am on my way to Crew practice at 5 in the morning. I have a playlist of songs that I listen to on my way to practice as we drive through rural roads through dense trees and rolling green hills. I will usually close my eyes, listen to the song and then visualize different music video-esque scenes to get inspiration.

Rowing on the reservoir that my Crew team practices on is very inspiring, also. There is a very specific cove with a small peninsula that I row past at the start and end of every practice that is very special to me. It's shaped like a mini-hill in that it is very domed. Its edge is filled with reeds and then has grass covering it all the way to the top where there is a small cluster of bent trees making a protective canopy. This is the setting for a scene in my story where three of my main characters (Sasha, Orion and Mahti) finally get the chance to act like kids and create a make-shift rope swing to jump off of and into the water. Whenever I pass it, I can visualize my three characters jumping into the water and splashing each other while their tents stay nestled carefully in the protection of the overlapping trees.