What's your inspiration?

Alex If you can create a character or two in a book that you really have an affinity for then the world around them will gradually take shape. It is your characters who write your book and you are their canvas and their brushes.

I like to start with a first line and work from there. I find it much easier to get the creative juices flowing. We once had a competition at work where the first line was "It was delicious, wickedly delicious..." As you can probably imagine, the entries were quite varied – but all of them were excellent!

I'm the get a character and build the world around them type.

I'm still new to this, but for my shorter stuff I have really found some of Tony's 'inspiration points' brilliant. For example my 'When the laughter's gone' came from one of them. I think this is because I write about in a lot of different genres in my short stories compared to longer stuff. I actually think the above story is one of my best For my longer work though I've found that I am quite idea driven, and that once I have a basic idea I can write and write an see what develops.

I'm having the same problem with the insertion versus thematic base question, Alex. A theme allows one to ease into a story or poem over time. Foundations begin from the moment a theme is set into the mind, forming a strong base for an idea that may have taken weeks to pop up. By comparison, insertions are coincidental. This type of inspiration may have been set to test our mettle. If that's the case, it has succeeded with me. I have had absolutley no inspiration for exactly four weeks and one day and that will remain in place until my personal and public issues are resolved. It feels like a part of me has been removed. I know that it is retrievable and I see this passage of time as a grieving process for growth, but it's a lonely place when I can't let it out. Having said that, I now realise, by writing this, that the trick is to see past the primary problem of accepting the challenge's demands by working along the lines of a theme in which the insertions can be fitted. So far, I'm working on one story for the competition but every time I get to the part where the prawn sandwich and black shoes have been inserted, I feel like cringeing. It looks like I've just stuck them in there. While it may seem as if the only materials we have available to us on a building project are the windows, try to put them to one side, protect them from the elements and start laying down foundations, always bearing in mind that they will have to be fitted comfortably at some point. It's a brave architect that would dare to design a building using only windows as a starting point but the results could be amazing. Thanks for posting this one, Alex. I need to get started, or restarted. Richard