ON “INSPIRATION”

WHY (ALMOST) ANYTHING CAN BECOME A STORY

When people find out I’m a writer, often one of their first questions is, “Where do you get your inspiration?” Non-writers have this notion that great story ideas come from magical writing epiphanies, bursts of originality in the middle of the night, or gifts from the heavens.

If only it were that easy.

Until the pandemic, I didn’t realize how much of my “inspiration” came from simply being out in the world. People assumed that I was lucky because being struck indoors, I had all the time in the world to create stories. But time alone doesn’t always help. Time out, time in the world, is our real inspiration. For example, while driving my son to school one morning, a woman entered the crosswalk holding a cardboard tray with four Philz coffee cups. I imagined what would happen if she suddenly tripped on a stone and dropped that tray of coffee. Would she cry? Would she attempt to rescue what remnants of her order were left? Would she regret having wasted $25? Would she go back and persuade Philz to replace them gratis? Would her friends complain about her being late?

Did she even have friends? Does she walk through that same crosswalk every day, carrying four empty Philz coffee cups in a cardboard tray, to make people think she has friends?

You get the picture.

That moment, that sudden unexpected event, the one that maybe didn’t even happen yet, is my inspiration. And all that follows, real, imagined, or both, is the story. Inspiration doesn’t happen by magic. Inspiration isn’t spontaneously created in a pandemic solitude. Inspiration comes from being in the world.