Getting in the Groove

Inspiration, inspiration, inspiration!

You know how it is when you stumble out of bed after only a few hours rest because the kids wouldn’t go to sleep, and you’re busy trying to spoon caffeine directly into your veins, in between getting breakfast for the family, trying not to put milk in the kids’ sandwiches, and wondering why no one seems to have any actual pairs of socks despite you buying new ones only last week, then you’re trying to remember to drive to school, not into a ditch, and then you get back and you’ve got an hour to write before you have get on with other stuff? You know that, right?

Somehow, you’re supposed to insert yourself into a completely new world, full of fully-formed people getting up to all sorts of nonsense and knock out a whole bunch of shiny words. Yeah.

Right then, inspiration is not exactly in great supply. But you’ve got to find it anyway.

That’s where Pinterest comes in. It gives you the chance to pull together a whole bunch of visual cues that I can look at to take me into whatever world I need to be in. Here’s the board I created for SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB and its sequel:

(Click to see it at full size on Pinterest; sorry it doesn’t embed terribly well here).

The moment I look at this, it tells me the mood and tone I want for the books and it puts me in the headspace I need to work on them. Not all the pictures represent any particular character or scene in the books, but they connect me to the books and that’s what I need.

Anyone else use Pinterest for this? Or do you use it to find ideas in the first place? Or for something else entirely? Whichever, if you do, post a link to your boards. I’d love to see them.