First, I would like to say that I very rarely use the word muse when referring to where I get my inspiration for stories. I am driven by a need to create storylines, and ideas for stories seem to pop into my mind at odd times of the day and night. I have awakened from a sound sleep with an idea and I try to 'bookmark' the idea in my mind but I think I need to keep a notebook next to the bed. The ideas refuse to stay bookmarked.
Then there are the songs that I grew up with as a teen and young man. They awaken emotions within me that won't let me forget them and I take those emotions and create storylines from them. I don't mean that I take a song and dissect it; creating occurrences in my stories from the lines of a song. I mean that if a song makes me feel sad, angry, bitter, lonely or lost, you get the picture; I write from those emotions.
Sometimes I think about what my life would have been like if I had done something pivotal in my life differently, and I write about a character who has done what I think I should have done and project the lines of his or her life from there. It's no more complicated than that. I try to write with realism and the simplest, most effective way I know of doing that is to put myself in the place of the character and imagine what I would do, or what I should do, taking a different tack in each situation than I did in life. Perhaps that makes each of my stories somewhat autobiographical, but that's the way I do it. I think a lot of people do the same thing. Besides, many writers write about the unthinkable and suddenly, it isn't so unthinkable.
That's enough for today. Gotta go write about apocalyptic stuff.
Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, The Empty Heart: A Collection and others
Available on Kindle
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