What is inspiration? I see it as two different things. What brings you an inspiration to create, and what inspires you to grow and succeed. Two completely different inspirations.
For me, the first is what inspires me to write a particular scene, character, or story. Sitting outside today with a warm breeze blowing on me as I listened to the leaves scratching across the top of the cement driveway gave me inspiration for a scene with my antagonist as he walks towards his intended victim.
Looking out over a cliff at the ocean, the smell of salt air and the sound of seagulls squawking all around me lead me to imagine a city rising out of the sea with gleaming spires reaching for the sky as the water runs down it and the sun glistens off of it.
Listening to my daughters tell me of their day helped me create my protagonist's daughter in my first book, as I imagined how I would respond if someone was threatening them.
These are sensory inspirations.
Sight - Sound - Smell
Now what inspires me to write in the first place is a whole different thing. I write to succeed. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone of many, many years in the same business that has allowed me to get to this point and raise two wonderful daughters and be married now for almost 25 years. To learn from the past and challenge myself going ever forward.
The inspiration to write for me is also the desire to use my artistic creative side, along with my intelligence, in a different way than just my day job or my occasional artist endeavors in drawing. The need to have my peers appreciate what I have written and accomplished, and truly enjoy the read not wanting to put my book down to reach its climactic ending.
A need to push myself to greater heights, and expand on my imaginative side of my brain. Along with learning a new industry and all its nuances to be successful in it.
A need to grow a business with a residual income that I can be proud of and share with the world. An income that potentially could be a strong supplemental income or an entire replacement income allowing me to write full-time as I get older and more tired of the traditional 5 days a week job. A new endeavor that will both satisfy my internal and external needs for myself and my family. A business that will allow me more freedom to explore and grow with each adventure.
So, as you can see, I have many reasons to write and lots of inspiration to be successful while doing it. It is not just a hobby for me. It is a means to much-wanted life-change. A desire to advance in life's stepping stones and not be left behind in its wake. To be an inspiration to others that if I can do it, so can they.
Drive - Desire - Need
What is your inspiration?