Thursday, February 26, 2015

Goodreads Question #3: How do you get inspired to write?

Victor D. Lopez I find inspiration from everyday life, dreams, books, movies, the news (often the source of my darkest fiction and poetry), friends, science . . . from everywhere. I almost never sit and think about a new idea for a book, poem, or, for that matter, blog post. Inspiration is all around us if we are open to it. The person sitting across from us on the subway has a real story to her life, but also my imagined story based on how she looks, what she is wearing, her expression, her bearing, how others around her react, and so on. Every homeless person pushing a cart through brownish snow in a dark alleyway on Christmas Eve has a story--his real story, yes, but also the imagined back story as I walk by. He is poetry in motion, though not of the facile sugar coated kind; he is a protagonist in an unwritten novel whose past and future will reveal themselves to us and to our readers if we give him wings and let him fly. The inebriated alcoholic at Noon on a Tuesday who offers a stranger a swig of wine from a bottle in a stained brown paper bag has a story, as does the man who takes the bag, drinks from the bottle and hands it back to him with a smile (a true observation--the man who took the offered drink was a close friend of mine and remains so, though he is a continent away today). If we keep an open mind and a receptive heart inspiration is never a problem. Finding the time to give life to the inspiration all around us is the challenge for me, and I suspect for most of us who have demanding day jobs and personal responsibilities that never leave us with enough time to pursue our passion.

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