By way of introducing my initial book, Things That Sometimes Happen, I made my first school visit in 1970. I cannot begin to count how many times since then I have made such visits. During that very first visit, I was asked (among many other things) two questions. Moreover, the many years I have made such visits those two questions were (and still are) always asked.
Where do you get your ideas? What inspired you to write … ?
“Where do you get your ideas?”
“What inspired you to write …………. [fill in the blank].”
I think the two questions are connected.
Consider the word “inspire.” I think for most people it suggests something mystical, as if some god-like spirit, or muse, was whispering an idea directly into my ear. As if it came from the outside.
In fact, “inspire” is Middle English, (1340). To quote the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, “inspire” (a verb) means “to ‘breathe in’ or infuse (a feeling, thought, idea, principle, etc.) into the mind …”
In other words, being inspired is not so much getting an idea, as it is the act of giving life to an idea you already have. That means being inspired requires you to have an idea in the first place.
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Which brings us to the second question.
I don’t know when my mother began to read to us every night, but it had to be early. Then too, there were lots of books in our house. A book was a regular birthday and Christmas gift. I had my own library.
My parents wanted to be writers, and they did so professionally. My great-grandparents were writers. So too was my grandmother. My aunt. Hardly a surprise that I was an early reader. A voracious reader.
Also, no surprise, I decided to become a writer when I was a senior in high school.
The point is this: Reading so much gave me a narrative mindset that when I experience something or learn about it, I think of it as a written story. I see the world as a story. So as a writer, one of my problems (not a hard one) is that I have too many ideas. My job — as a writer — is to give life to that idea, and shape that idea into a readable story.
Hence my mantra: Writers don’t write writing. They write reading.
What inspires me? Where do I get my ideas? Reading. Reading. Reading.
This summer I have asked writer friends and colleagues to answer these same two questions that I am sure they too are constantly being asked by young people — their readers.
Join me every Tuesday on my blog to see how they answer.
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