Thursday, August 13, 2009

Thursday Thought: The Wheres

So today is the last full day in Mexico and I've decided that if I can't truly uncook my brain enough to write new words, I'm just going to take in EVERYTHING around me and use it as inspiration, yanno, when that part of my brain starts to work again.

Over the course of the last few months I've taken a lot more pictures of my surroundings than I ever remember taking before and it has really helped me in figuring out where something happens in my new wip as opposed to just being random about location.

I've mostly tried to base locations in my books on places I've been or am really familiar with. My new project has me thinking outside this box of "safe" places I can pick from and now I've gone a bit camera crazy, trying to find just the right place for each of the pivotal scenes. Well, the ones I've been able to find words for anyway. (See yesterday's post.)

So what places inspire you? Are they real? Have you been there? Or are they imaginary and you're always there?

Would love to hear your thoughts. . . I'm off to the office, then going to click some more pics of the area. Will put some stuff up to share when I get back home!

4 comments:

Tana said...

My inspirations are half real and half imagined. CAn't wait to see the pics!

Elana Johnson said...

I actually do better if the place is imaginary. I get bogged down in details about streets and school names and stuff if the setting is a real place. Especially one I've never been to.

Amanda Bonilla said...

I definitely use places I've seen or been. I find that my writing just isn't as good if I try to make something up. However, I do use places that I've only visited briefly, and in those cases I just research the heck out of it, until I know enough about the area to feel comfortable writing about it.

Windy said...

It's so interesting to hear where a writer's setting "map" comes from!