Samantha's Bookshelf: northern lights

When I was 14 I had to have surgery. I had another at 15, another at 17, two at 18 (one was for appendicitis), another at 20 and then countless other procedures in between (I was such a healthy teenager, ha!). The recovery times for each of these surgeries varied significantly, but for the most part they always involved some form of lying in bed for at least a couple of days. After my first surgery, my parents got me a bunch of DVDs and brought one of the TVs into my bedroom during my recovery. The only problem was, after the anesthetic I was too sleepy to be able to focus on anything other than music and staring at the ceiling.

For my next surgery, my parents bought me a bunch of CD's and before I went into the hospital I printed out a selection of images and arranged them on my bedroom wall so I would easily be able to see them from my bed.

These pictures would be of places I wanted to go around the world, vibrant cities, European villages, tropical beaches, the Northern Lights, rainforests ... they'd be pictures of places where in my mind I could escape to and pretend I was there instead of lying in bed trying not to pull the stitches in my stomach.

These pictures would inspire me, I would create a world around me which could be completely different than the world I was living. As I started traveling around the world, I would buy postcards in each town, village, city or country I would visit. I stuck them all over my bedroom until I had each wall filled with pictures of places all over the world. Some could think I was obsessed with traveling. This is partly true, but primarily these pictures gave me inspiration.

I could stare at these images and write an entire novel in my head (let's face it, I had plenty of time up my sleeve!). It was a really good way to exercise my brain and to stretch my creativity beyond what I thought I was capable. Many of those ideas have never seen the light of day, however the WIP I'm currently working on is a product of one little idea that came to me during one of those recovery periods. The story was never formulated in my head, but I had this image of a girl, and her surroundings were so curious and interesting... and she looked slightly different than most people I know. I think only one scene played out in my head, but that scene stuck with me, and all these years later I am finally telling her story.

Now, whenever I go to write I think of those images, or I ask Google to give me some more inspiration, and those images will help create my story.

What images inspire your writing? Here's a few of mine....