There have been times in my life when I’ve lived amongst beauty. I’ve lived by the Cascade Mountains in Portland, Oregon. I’ve lived in the valley of Quito, Ecuador. I’ve lived on an island in Panama. During those times, it was easy to find inspiration from my surroundings. I looked out my window, I walked down the street, and saw things like this:
(excuse the terrible video quality!)
In fact, I started seriously writing my first novel while living in Panama among the palm trees and white sand. However, I continued my writing in a not-so-glamorous apartment in NE Minneapolis. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mpls! It’s just a little more high-paced and tense than island life. Not to mention, I had a 45 min. commute EACH way to work at that time.
Despite my transition from sunshine, tequila, and leisure to deadlines, traffic jams, and skyscrapers, I was still able to keep on writing. It was the little things that kept me going:
-Walks with my wonderful rescue dog
-Concerts at First Ave
-Homemade caprese salad
-Occasionally picking up my guitar
-My fantastic boyfriend, family, and friends (which is completely cliche, but there IS a reason everyone draws inspiration from these entities…)
And sometimes, the terrible parts of life push inspiration into your brain. Sometimes the rotten, no-good, shitty happenings of life are essential for a good story. After all, who wants to read a story with no conflict or trouble wrapped into its pages? Not me. I thrive on trouble. I eat it up. Sometimes my best writing is born out of shitty situations. Like my ceiling collapsing above my bed in my last apartment:
You just have to get yourself up, dust yourself off (literally in this situation…), sit down at your laptop, and pound away angrily at the keys, hoping you’ll create something halfway decent out of your fury. Sometimes you will.
But let’s face it, most days are not on-the-beach fabulous OR ceiling-collapsing terrible. Most days are somewhere in between, a dull shade of gray. Those are the days we’re forced to be creative, to push the envelope. Boring is just a state of mind.
Walk around. Observe things. Go to a coffee shop and notice the way people behave, the way they interact with each other. Watch the snow melt and trickle down the sidewalk. Think about where all the water goes as it pours into the gutters and down the sewer drains. This is exactly what I did yesterday–just another dull, ordinary day working as a teller for a huge corporate bank (have I mentioned I’m not exactly proud of that? Well, now I have…).
One of my favorite things to do is wander around with my dog and go on little photo shoots. Here are some shots from last summer:
And I’ll leave it at that. I can’t decide what inspires you. Maybe it’s a dead squirrel on the sidewalk. Or a crazy old woman who is begging for change by the bus. Or a dark-haired girl carrying a cello case. Who knows. It’s your head, your imagination. Do with it what you will.
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.