It is everywhere, in what we see, smell, hear, taste and feel. The beautiful morning's golden sunrise or a torrential downpour from a thunderstorm. A thousand animals racing across the Sahara or a single wildflower growing within the grass. The strong and steady tide of the ocean or the gentle rumble of the mountains. And this is just the natural world about us, what of everything else in our lives?
Your daily routine, your loved ones and family, your past experiences, all of these things collide when you put words to paper. Your emotions and ideas blend into a most beautiful ink filling your pen as you go, breathing into something new, and beautiful. What a way to both release and express yourself. It can be most cathartic.
For me, inspiration comes from the rollercoaster of my life with depression, as I have written before, intense sadness and despair have become one of my greatest tools. My great highs and lows, and the vast expanse of emotions, have given me inspiration for all my characters' personalities and the struggles they face.
It can be difficult to make different people, different insights, different beliefs, again in these areas I often find help from people around me, real and fictional. The array of actions and reactions of others is also a great help for creating authentic characters, and hopefully to bring about those great eureka moments. When it happens organically it is the most exciting and rewarding thing.
My favourite novels, films and paintings all add a pinch of seasoning to my stories, some things bright and engaging, and just as important the ones of fear and pain. It is these great moments in life and art which bring things alive when we read them, watch them, feeling them. Those of the time we remember most vividly, the ones that linger. For the good or the bad.
So much can be brought into your work, pull from your favourite authors and let them guide you. Build your world around that amazing film and its landscapes. Add the dimensions of your favourite movie hero. There is a reason you are drawn to such a detail or instant, so grab hold of that idea and run with it.
My biggest inspiration has always been love. My greatest wish ever since I was young was to find my prince charming and doing so, and marrying him at 24, I brought so much of that into my novels. Everyone is a tale of romance, of finding true love, of gaining strength and understanding and some ending in heartbreak. But I am someone who will try as often as I can to give my readers closure before they reach the last page. Even if you hate me 😊
So take a walk outside, turn through the pages of a coffee table book, let your mind wander and one of my best abilities, daydream! Build a world within your world, study it, grow it, and create something only you can or could, something created by your mind and imagination, what can be more glorious than that?
My last note as well, do not be afraid to try something new, something different, if I'm not wrong there are woman/dinosaur romances out there and they are selling! Go for it! Make that world you have in your mind a reality, by allowing us to live it too. Thanks!
Afton Feltham
Check out my first novel “Bloom of the Desert Rose” available now.
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