One of the things I am asked most often as an author is, “Where
do you get your inspiration for your stories?”
And my answer is always the same: everywhere.
I get them from other books that I’ve read, and photos that I
have seen. From the music that I listen to, the stories that I hear, and
experiences that I’ve had. I remember all these things. But I am a visual
thinker. I think of my collected experiences as a series of live pictures—like
an endless personal movie running constantly in my head. And so, for
inspiration, I like to surround myself with pictures of the things that help me
visualize my story.
My current book, SCANDAL IN THE NIGHT, is a story of love lost
and found, set in pre-Raj India, and in the mid-19th century English
countryside. To help visualize and write the story, I sought out photos that
augmented or supported the images that the story had created in my head. And the
place where I could most easily find them and collect them was Pinterest.
Pinterest gives it’s users the ability to search through a vast
store of varied visual images, on a variety of different topics of interest, at
one centralized “web location.” And
better yet, it lets users manipulate, move and store the images in ways that
are useful to the user.
