The Art of Inspiration

René Magritte’s painting, The Empire of Lights) was the inspiration for William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) movie including the famous scene in the film where Father Merrin first appears outside of possessed Regan MacNeil's home.

As an author, I'm often asked, where do you get your ideas? It's a common interview question and I think the most honest answer, for me, is EVERYWHERE.

Ideas are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the colors we see, the sounds we hear, the textures we feel whether they warm or chill. Everything contains a kernel of inspiration, a spark that can contribute to a scene, a character, a twist in the plot.

One of the most visual inspirations is through art. In a painting, there is a story, and translating that story into words is pure magic. In this sense, art is the inspiration.

The Siren by John Waterhouse

A new series I'm writing under AK Wilder, for example, came to life at the behest of John Waterhouse's The Siren. It has also given rise to a paranormal romance novella, Blood and Water and an urban fantasy novel, The Blood in the Beginning.

Can you feel the inspiration coming from these paintings?

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Di Vinci 

Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code is powerfully plot driven, the main character being the Mona Lisa. Film or book - which brought the art to life the most for you?

The Blue Scarf by Tamara de Lempicka

The Last Nude by Ellis Avery found inspiration in Tamara de Lempicka's life and art. It's a story of a struggling American, Rafaela Fano, who avoiding the path to prostitution by agreeing to model for an artist... the results are as sultry as Lempicka’s Jazz Age paintings.

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X

The novel, I am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto. brings to life the image by John Singer Sargent in a way the painting, in its time, could not. Unveiled in Paris in 1884, it met with shock and ridicule for being too provocative, too risque. The book, in 2003, met with no such objection.

Vermeer's View of Delft

Finally, in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, the elderly writer, Bergotte, visits a Dutch art exhibit and, while gazing at a detail of Vermeer's View of Delft, drops dead.

Many critics search for what it is in the painting that killed Bergotte and triggered his final thoughts in the book.

I love how these pieces of art morph into a character in the story, answering questions as well as asking new ones.

If you have a favourite book born of a work of art, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

* * * 

Kim Falconer's New YA Fantasy Series is out in 2019 - The Bone Throwers. 

Also, check her urban fantasy out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel and the SFF Quantum Enchantment Series. 

You can find Kim on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Marinating Ideas

Loui Jover

Ideas hit hard and fast, right? A bolt out of the blue! A flash of insight! A stroke of genius!

Apparently, no.

Ideas do not come in a burst followed by the classical Eureka exclamation. They are not Athena, goddess of strategy, born fully grown, bursting from her father's head, wearing armor, shouting a war cry.

Research shows that ideas are a slow punch. They fade in after lingering in and around the corners of the mind.

Steve Johnson does a wonderful TED TALK on this. The upshot is, ideas marinate in a stimulating, chaotic soup. When we finally articulate them, they've actually been brewing for a substantial amount of time.

The myth of writers taking those long, solitary walks in nature, returning with the genius idea, or the philosopher sitting quietly by the fountain with chin resting on fist until realization bursts to life like a chorus of Kookaburras (listen to a chorus of Kookaburras here) is only partly true.

What really stimulates new ideas is coffee.

 Okay, not exactly coffee, but the coffee shop.

According to Johnson, the consumption of coffee coincided with the age of enlightenment, not so much for the stimulating properties, but because drinking more coffee meant drinking less alcohol. Let's face it, the water wasn't  exactly bacteria and parasite free. It was safer to drink beer, rum and wine day and night, which dulled the creative edge. Ideas definitely became sharper with the switch to a cup o' Joe.

Once out of the drunken stupor and into a kind of "writers room" environment with diverse and stimulating perspectives, ideas went wild, and they've been accelerating ever sense. The chaos and unpredictability of like and unlike minds, bantering in a free-for-all is much more conducive to flipping on the new neurons in the brain.

The Muses by Maarten van Heemskerck

Johnson says your office should look like a Maarten van Heemskerck rendition of Apollo and the Muses.
Think about it. Are the Muses - representing the manifestations of creative ideas - ever drawn in isolation, brows creased, nose in the books?

Most images I've seen are festival like dalliances that seem to go on day and night without end. There is definitely a lot of dancing and cavorting.

What this new research, and ancient wisdom, tells us about cultivating ideas can be summed up in four simple steps:

a) drink less alcohol

b) brainstorm with others

c) allow ideas to marinate and grow

d) nurture more connection; less protection

What I want to know is, where do your new ideas come from? Isolation or collaboration? A bit of both?
xxxKim

Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing paranormal romance, urban fantasy, YA and epic science fantasy novels.

You can find out more about Kim at the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter.

She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month.

Her latest release is "Blood and Water" in Supernatural Underground: Vampires Gone Wild.