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 Writers on Writing: Sources of Inspiration
Ideas can come from some of the wildest things...and sometimes the most mundane things. Here are some stories about how the author first hit upon the idea. 
"Fictional ideas seem to sort of descend simultaneously from a lot of different places, and
I'd always been fascinated with a murder that occurred in Cambridge."
—Sue Miller, While I Was Gone "I have been walking around with the idea of songs in my head for years." — Mary McGarray Morris , Songs in Ordinary Time "I wrote it because I was interested in the notion of a woman taking boarders into her house. I was probably lonely." — Elizabeth Berg, Open House "The story really came from an image I had of a woman in the middle of the night at three o'clock in the morning being awakened by a knock on the door and going downstairs and having a stranger standing across the threshold from her." — Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife "I walked in a Wal-Mart and looked around and I thought, 'You could live here. There's everything you need. You could exist in this place.'" — Billie Letts, Where The Heart Is "My family moved in with my in-laws for about a month while our house was being built and though I don't remember it, it became the premise for this book in a way that I can't explain." — A. Manette Ansay, Vinegar Hill 
"I wrote it because a play friend of my son's died in his family's swimming pool when my son
was two years old. I was so stricken by that idea that every next step is a disaster waiting to
happen, and if you turn your back, and I was just obsessed by that, so that was the kernel."
— Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World "I overheard in an airport one woman talking to another and one said to the other, 'Are you married or single?' and she said, 'I'm divorced. I thought we were very very happily married, but it turned out that my husband didn't think so at all.' — Maeve Binchy, Tara Road "Somebody told me about her four-year-old goddaughter who had come home from preschool entranced by the word 'vulgar.' She knew this was a perfectly fine word, but she knew that every time she said it, her mother and father were going to sweat bullets. This was therefore very empowering. And with my daughter in my arms, at the end of the day, a sentence came into my head that would preview the very first sentence of the first chapter." — Chris Bohjalian, Midwives 
What authors have most inspired you?
More Writers on Writing |
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