Where Does Inspiration Come From?

After writing my memoir, I Don’t Want to Be Crazy, I was eager to try fiction. Eager, but totally stumped as how to begin. When I wrote I Don’t Want to Be Crazy, I knew the story, the characters, the setting, the ending. But when I started developing You Are Not Here, all I knew was that there was a teenage girl whose boyfriend died, and that he is buried very close to her house. That was it. That was all I had. At times, it was scary to think that every moment — every word — had to come from somewhere inside my brain. I have some friends who write fiction, and they think that all those possibilities are freeing (and that writing a memoir would be considerably harder), but it was the opposite for me. So I started with what I knew…

We all struggle with loss (including losing touch with a friend, moving away, or someone dying) and I very am interested in how people cope with those feelings. Much to my surprise, I found that when I was working on You Are Not Here, I could draw on my own experiences—even the saddest of them. For example, when I was nineteen, a friend of my best friend died suddenly. While I had only met this girl a few times, her death reminded me that scary, unexpected things can and do happen. Also, there are people that I’ve dated or been friends with that are no longer part of my life…and on some days that void seems really big, and I start wondering things like: What is that person doing right now? What would my life be like if that person were still in it? And finally, on a lighter note, I’ve had a few “sort-of-boyfriends” like Brian and have plenty of experiences to draw from.

I wish I could do some sort of annotated manuscript or interactive website where you could click on a part of You Are Not Here and it would tell you the real story behind the inspiration. [You'll be able to see some inspiration photos in a later post.] For starters, an important photo from Annaleah’s past is based on an actual photo of me as a baby. Names of people in the book are based on people in my family. Even one of the final scenes is VERY heavily based on an experience I had when I was about seventeen. Or at least it’s based on what I remember all these years later.

I am also very inspired by the books I read, the art I see, the music I listen to. While I was working on the manuscript for You Are Not Here, I was reading The Bell Jar and had been to see a Francis Bacon show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both of those things found a direct way into the book. Also, I’ve been into listening to podcasts lately. I’m addicted to “The Moth” and “This American Life.” “The Moth” is a live taping of people telling true stories--without notes. “This American Life” has all sorts of fiction and nonfiction stories—often with unique twists. A story I heard on “This American Life” actually inspired the idea for my third book. But that's another story... :)