Let Go of the Reins

What inspires your stories? What inspires your poems, your pictures, your life?

For me, the thing that inspires me most in my writing is my characters. Once I start writing them, I want to know what's going to happen, where the story is going to go. Every once in awhile I'll be doing something, watching a movie or taking a walk, and I'll get a good idea for a story. I ruminate on what I'd like to see happen, or what should happen based on this and that but when I actually sit down to write it, it just doesn't pan out the same. It doesn't have the same flow that my other stories do. It's more controlled, restrained.

My favourite stories (to write at least) all started with something simple, like a little girl walking through a field, or a group of friends sitting around a table, and just grew from there. I remember my highschool english teacher saying that a story has a life of it's own, you never know where it will take you.

I'm learning that when you try to rein in a story, it rebels. Oh sure, you can eventually break it and make it your pretty pony but it will be the worse for it.