Here is a great little story about how Tracy Chevalier got the idea for her book Girl with the Pearl Earring. What inspires you?
Nature? Poetry? Music? A really good book? A painting?
I pulled the following text straight from Writer’s Almanac today, so forgive me, dear Writer’s Almanac. I thought it might help remind us as writers, artists and creative types to pay attention to what inspires us.
Tracy Chevalier was born in Washington, D.C. (1962). After college, she moved to London to stay for six months, but she fell in love with a British man and she has never left. She started writing historical novels, and her second book, Girl With a Pearl Earring (1999), was a huge best-seller.
For the book, Chevalier was inspired one day when she was staring at a poster she had bought when she was 19, a copy of Johannes Vermeer’s painting Girl With a Pearl Earring. She imagined what life might have been for the young woman who ended up the subject of that painting. She started the book right away, but she was pregnant and she didn’t want the book to get lost in her life as a new mother, so she researched and wrote the whole novel in just eight months.
Tracy Chevalier said,
“Don’t write about what you know, write about what you’re interested in. Don’t write about yourself –you aren’t as interesting as you think.”
Check out Writer’s Almanac here.
I think it’s absolutely true that we aren’t as interesting as we think. Every time people ask me about my writing process, I wonder why, because it seems so boring. Here is my writing process: every morning I sit down and write. That’s it. That’s the secret to my success. I bet Tracy Chevalier knows this secret, too. xo
P.S. I am an ex-shrink who writes award-winning novels. Check out my books here.
Hmm, what inspires me? I guess that half the time, good writing inspires me to want to write something good myself. The other half of the time, it’s something random – a juxtaposition of words or ideas either in my head or the world. That being said, whenever I’ve written something book length, I always find a song that becomes the theme of my main character. For whatever reason, that doesn’t happen with the short stories I write.
Hi Scout,
I really like that idea of finding a song that becomes the theme of the main character. I’ve never heard a writer say that before. Very creative of you!
I had a reader email me a few months ago to say that they were writing a song for Sara, the main character in my book, Seeking Sara Summers. I was honored.
Good writing inspires me, too. And taking walks by the river near my home.
Thanks for commenting!
“Don’t write about what you know — write about what you’re interested in. Don’t write about yourself — you aren’t as interesting as you think.â€
AMEN.
I really don’t see the point of autobiographical first novels. Of course I use real characteristics of my life and personality, but that’s different from just fictionalizing what happened to me. I write to live lives I haven’t or can’t live; that’s the point.
As you said so well, John: AMEN.