Some Things That Inspire Me

1. Vanessa Carlton's album, Heroes & Thieves
2. Emily's property in Goochland where I (used to) work
3. People I love

When I was first formulating the plotline for my story, and the characters in it, I listened to this album very nearly at all times. Specifically the songs "Heroes & Thieves" and "More Than This," but I'd have the whole album on repeat while I cleaned the stalls. The woods behind her house, that I walked the horses through every day, always felt to me very magical, and it was there that the forest in my story was born. In my head it looks exactly like that - only of course very much larger. The characters in my stories definitely draw inspiration from people I know in real life. One of my largest goals is to make my characters believable - their habits, their flaws, etc. Typically a friend wouldn't necessarily recognize themselves in a character since I mix and match until I get the right combination of traits, but the people who inspire me definitely find their way into the characters.


I did a writing assignment last night instead of going to sleep or studying for my anatomy quiz. We had to make a list, in class, of things that we feared, images we'd never forget, smells we like (or don't like), we had to have at least 5 of everything and there were about 10 different categories. Then the writing exercise was to pull something from the list and write about it. I chose one of my fears - losing the people I love, and combined it with one of the images I'll never forget - seeing my father in the hospital bed. I wrote what my professor calls a "short short story" - just a couple hundred words - but it was incredibly powerful and emotionally exhausting for me. It was about a girl who had just lost her father.

Mom, you'd hate it, I think it's just like those book club books you read that you say you hate because they always end in death. Well this started in death and wasn't long enough to get very far, so I think you'd feel the same way about it.

Except for the fact that it was started by my own fear and memory, the story itself was entirely fiction. I made it all up, but I put so much of myself into it, that I was crying nearly the whole time I wrote it. It was like acting, the way that I pulled it out of myself from darker places, even though none of it was true. David said it was very powerful - I hated every minute of it (immediately regretting that I hadn't just gone to bed before I started) and don't really want to read it to revise it so that I can turn it in on Thursday.

He's the only one that has seen both that story and what I've got so far of my novel, and I think he preferred the writing in this short story. I will post it here once my professor has had a chance to grade it. I definitely prefer the writing process of the novel - fun, instead of a chore - but I think there's got to be a balance. A way to use the characters and story I love, but with the same moving writing style of the other story. It'll just be a matter of finding a way to do it.