Setting Inspiration

As a writer, I sometimes see an image that bangs itself over my head and says to me, This is a place in your story! I had that feeling about a certain image of a 102 year old transport ship that was left to rot off the coast of Australia and grew into a floating forest. It is images like that, images like photographs of Angkor Wat, or images of trees growing into a woven pattern over water and forming a bridge that inspire my world. My spouse has started a collection of these images for me to use as reference and inspiration as I flesh out the world within my head. 

They provide excellent fuel for my imagination, spurring even more ideas and taking me to those places and helping me think about how characters would feel or act in such surroundings. I still have much to do with building my world, but it has never felt more real in my head than it does tonight. I wish I could travel to these places and take photographs of them myself. To experience their majesty (and to have my own photog…