5 Quirky Sources of Inspiration from Everyday Life

Inspiration. The word means to fill the mind, heart, or soul. To inflame or blow into. To give divine guidance. It has such a grand and humbling connotation! Think of the Muse pouring bountiful ideas into your brain, the Universe opening the doors of its riches.

But inspiration doesn’t have to be something great and amazing. It doesn’t always come from profound ideas or unique insights. In fact, most inspiration is much more down-to-earth. If you wait around for that breathtaking idea or illuminating vision, you may be waiting a long time. Instead, look for inspiration in things you can see and experience every day. You can find ideas galore in the most humdrum—even banal—places. Here are five.

1. Arguments.

You want to go out. Your partner wants to stay in. You feel bored and sick of the same-old-same-old; your partner is tired, and likes quiet evenings. Someone says the wrong thing; someone takes something the wrong way. And there it is: An argument.

Or perhaps your argument is about something more serious: How to spend money or whether someone is lying. Maybe it gets heated—there is shouting. Or maybe it deadens into silence.

Arguments are always unpleasant—but they are also fruitful sources of ideas. You don’t have to write about a specific real-life argument to get inspiration from one. Instead, look at what lies under the argument. Usually, there is stress or fatigue. Often, there is a conflict between what is meant and what is heard. Sometimes, there are simple personality differences or old wounds that have never healed.

Think about the conflicts, tensions, perceptions, and intentions behind arguments. Stories are all about friction of one sort or another. Mine your arguments to find that friction.

2. Thrift stores.

Go into a department store, and you will see what manufacturers are trying to pawn off as the latest style. But go into a thrift store, and what you will find is history.

Every item in a thrift store is unique, and each has a story. I once found a brightly-striped jacket in perfect condition and clearly from Central America at Savers, a thrift store in South Minneapolis. I instantly imagined a history for it. Someone traveling in Guatemala must have spied it in a market and fallen in love with the lavish colors, but once back in Minnesota, they felt uncomfortable in such brilliant hues. Or else it was a gift from a traveler who proudly brought the jacket home to the Twin Cities and gave it to a friend who couldn’t imagine wearing blue, red, green, yellow, and purple stripes.

Perhaps my history of the jacket was completely incorrect, but it doesn’t matter. The jacket (which I bought and still wear) gave me inspiration. What about that teapot shaped like a duck? Or that worn stuffed-animal octopus? Or that garish pink loveseat? Who first bought those items and why? Who used them and for how long? Why and why did they give them up?

3. Headlines.

At 1:22 p.m. on Monday, May 19^th, the main headline on CNN.com read: “Cybercrime Crackdown: ‘Creepware’ was used to spy on Miss Teen USA. How many deliciously disturbing ideas can you get out of that headline? A story about a teenaged beauty contestant with a dark secret? One about a troubled character stalking a young beauty queen online? A detective cracking a troubling case of cybersnooping? Even the single word “creepware” puts all sorts of ideas into my head.

The headline you choose doesn’t have to be such a dramatic one. Also on CNN.com at the same time were:

• I was a wildfire evacuee.
• “Girls Gone Wild”  founder arrested.
• CEO’s open up about gay sons.
• Japan’s “anti-loneliness” café.

Imagine the possibilities.

4. Courtroom TV.

I honestly don’t know anyone who likes daytime courtroom television shows, but someone must because they are on at all hours: Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Alex, People’s Court. And, hate them or not, you can find a wealth of story ideas in them. Take these for example:

• Two grandmothers argue because one wasn’t invited to a baby shower.
• A quarrel on a party bus leads the driver to leave a girl on an unfamiliar street at 3:00 a.m.
• A young man is accused of stealing money from his comatose mother.

I’m not suggesting you simply write the real-life story—that’s stealing, not writing—but that you pull out of those stories ideas of your own. Invent your own feuding grannies or party-bus nightmare. And if you don’t want to actually sit through the programs, check out their websites, where they often have synopses of cases.

5. Pet Peeves.

Pet peeves are interesting because they are so individual and so rooted in personal history. I’ve known people who got genuinely and intensely upset over clammy handshakes, poorly matched ties and shirts, and crumbs in butter. I had a boyfriend once who was annoyed by tail lights that flashed too quickly and a female friend who cringed every time she saw someone with scuffed shoes. Me? I hate it whenever I hear some way pronounce the “j” in Beijing like the “g” in beige. It should be pronounced like a plain English j, dammit. 

Does it matter that people mispronounce the name of a foreign city? Of course not. And, given my own tendency to use incorrect grammar, it’s a little hypocritical of me to find it so annoying. Still that’s the thing about pet peeves: They make no sense.

Pet peeves are a great source of conflict. All you need is two characters: one with a pet peeve and another who does the exact thing that peeves the first. Draw those characters well, and you’re off and running.

The truth is, inspiration is all around us. You can find it in your favorite pair of old slippers or a box of photos, a misdialed number or a glass of spilled wine. Once you start looking, you will find it everywhere, and will never run out of ideas.

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