Where Do You Go?

On this Road Trip Wednesday, YA Highway asks: When you need creative inspiration, where do you go?

I like the question because place is the largest driving force behind most of my writing. I have never taken a journey to find creative inspiration. I simply walk and live and, in doing that, I am inspired.

When I stepped back to think where that inspiration most often happens, I discovered that it is both near my home and near water.  I think I am still trying to understand why water sets my imagination free.  Maybe because it is vast and uncontrollable, difficult to keep, always moving, bending, emptying, swelling.  Maybe there is something within it I can not capture and so I try.

Below are some photos of the waters that inspire me. I am lucky to live just steps away from them.

So, where do you go?

New York Harbor (I live on the the Brooklyn waterfront)

Atlantic Ocean (from Coney Island)

The Gowanus Canal

A Sense of Place

Place is important to me.  In my writing.  In my life. 

I like to understand how we fit inside a space or stand at the edge.  Places cling to memory.  They hold on to moments we've never known. 

I am working on a new story and I decided to set it on the streets I walk every day. I wanted to keep it close.  And true.

So I have to ask, where are you?

Bring It On

I'm back from my blogging hiatus, where I fell out of reality for a few days, eating my way through the holidays, reading two books for two new book clubs, sleeping well, and napping, which is something I haven't done in quite some time.

The New Year begins and so begins the idea that we can begin a-new. I have many resolutions swimming around inside a still sleepy mind. I make resolutions a lot, not just at the beginning of a new year. Time has a knack for beginnings and endings. It's very good at closing doors and opening windows. There are falling leaves and grey days and spring flowers and anniversaries and the reminder of all the tomorrows that allow you to put today and yesterday to rest.

This year, I plan to write a new novel and I'm very excited about it. I am entering a story I don't yet fully understand, a world I am fascinated by, and this book is bringing out things I have always wanted to write about: forgotten amusement parks and a network of underground canals. Musicals and singing and the beautiful stars of old films I once loved.

I'm excited to nestle inside of this world for a while but there is a little bit of trepidation. This is my 'second' novel and I realize how wonderful it was to go into the first one blindly. This time around, I am carrying a lot of fears with me and a lot of feelings of inadequacy. You would think it would be the opposite, now that I have one under my belt (ha!), but it's not shaping up that way. There was a bold arrogance when I began writing Spared that I am not experiencing this time around. But there is a lot of excitement about this new place, these characters. I am hanging on to that joy for now.

Obviously, I don't yet know what the year will bring. But there are things I can bring to it and I very much want to bring this new book into the 'world'. I don't expect it to fall into so many hands, but I'll be happy enough to just let it be.

What do you plan to bring to the new year?

Brooklyn is Now

Since living in Brooklyn, I have wanted desperately to write a story that is set here. Every day, I walk past churches and old butcher shops and bakeries. I see old women chatting on the sidewalks, pushing their grocery carts. I see a lone canoe cross the polluted Gowanus Canal. I walk the boardwalk on Coney Island in the middle of winter past the grey amusement park, a place that, for me, is haunting. It whispers, we used to be something majestic…and now… I bike through Williamsburg on the Sabbath and witness a culture that is foreign, secular. A face that stares straight ahead as if to remind us, you may walk beside me but you can’t know me.

There’s so much of it that inspires. I’ve often wondered why I am paralyzed, unable to tell a story that resides here. But I am concerned about the history of a place. Preserving that history. Understanding that history. I wonder why, when it comes to real places, I am afraid to learn more. The thought of pouring through pages, digging through archives frightens me. So, imagine my awakening when I discovered that Brooklyn is then and, through time, I will come to know it. But that Brooklyn is also now. And I know now.

Photo via dailypostal