Authors are often asked “Where do you get your ideas from?” The standard answer is “everywhere!”
And it’s true. You never know when an idea is going to sneak up on you and stand on your toes.
The inspiration for my upcoming debut novel, Cinderella’s Dress, came from two places:
1. A picture book of the same name. Years ago, I was helping my daughter find books in the picture book area of the library. She was in that transitional phase between picture books and early readers. I pulled out Cinderella’s Dress
Immediately, I thought: “Interesting! I wonder if that’s Cinderella’s daughter. And If the dress didn’t disappear, I wonder what adventures it had after the ball?” But the story itself was about how the animals made Cinderella’s Dress.
However, that thought about Cinderella’s dress persisted. And so did the title. Cinderella’s Dress became my working title and the publishers decided to keep it.
2. A line in Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class
“Until the personnel shortage of World War II, department store window display staff were all male.”
What? All male? I began to wonder what it would be like to be one of the first women working in department store window display.
I linked those two sources of inspiration together, wondering, What would happen if Cinderella’s Dress ended up in a Fifth Avenue Department Store window during WWII?
That’s all it took for this book to be up and running. I just needed to figure out how to get the dress to New York and why it would end up in a display window!
Inspiration can come from anything. My WIP was inspired by a vacation I took to Cornwall, to a little village where I couldn’t get a phone signal.
Sounds like you should vacation more often 😉
Sometimes it seems like the best ideas come from the strangest inspired connections, even weird connections that are difficult to explain. Poof! An abstract idea bounces out of seemingly nowhere. Your line of connections to the the final idea is a nice example of abstraction.
Excellent topic. Always something interesting to talk about.
Exactly. It’s like completing a puzzle–trying to make the connections. It seems random at first, but then it totally makes sense.
I LOVE how ideas come to us as writers. Just hearing your above story made me think of the ways I’ve had ideas in the past – that beginning spark, set off by something that is so different from where we end up taking it – what a wonderful feeling that is! Your book sounds amazing, and I can’t wait to read it, by the way!! Thanks for stopping by my interview today, too 🙂
Thanks Ashlee! We’re going to have a fun June with our debuts meeting the world for the first time.