Inspiration

Someone asked me the other day the classic question all authors seem to get - where do you get your ideas from? What inspires you? It is the one question most authors dread, because it's sometimes very difficult to answer. For me, it can be any number of things. My current novel (Nanobite - sneak peek coming soon) was originally inspired by a word association game. I'd just published The Surgeon and was sat looking at the dreaded blank screen, trying to think about what to write next. After about an hour of typing precisely nothing, I began to play with word associations, trying to come up with something. Before I knew it, I'd written over 600 words and had a head full of potential plot lines. However, that is a new method for me. I'm really lucky in that I live in an area of great natural beauty (Scotland) and right on the coast. As a horror writer, stormy weather often features as an element of my work; and I often find that a walk or bike ride to admire the views will give me what I think of as 'micro-ideas' - elements that may fit into one story or another. I don't keep a notebook, just let the ideas bounce around in my head (my wife would say there's plenty of room, ha ha) in the hope that two or three disparate elements will combine and give me a flash of inspiration. However, I do like to take scenic pictures; these I do keep. It might be just so I can look back on a particular view and use it to try and recreate the mood it conveys; or it might be simply to use as a reference for description. I keep a scrapbook of clippings from myriad sources for this purpose - old calenders, newspapers, brochures, the list is endless really. So, that's how I get some ideas. Probably I've missed a few, it's not really a conscious process. I think most writers of fiction (whatever the genre) use a multiplicity of methods to first ask and the answer the question, 'What if...?"