Pictures inspire the muse, and they are fun.
If you have visited me here before, you know already that visual images inspire my writing. I particularly enjoy still photographs for this purpose because they represent an arrested moment in life. Freezing a scene reveals more than the original sighting because it allows time for our minds to add their own narratives to the mix; with contemplation, meanings emerge as both personal and universal – in the process we meet the muse.
There are many ‘photo essays’ on this blog, but I’m sharing something slightly different this time, not simply pictures. I manipulated a few of my photographs to make them look like book covers – perhaps not particularly good examples because I’m not a designer – but good enough, I hope, to provide the ‘feel’ of a cover. I invite you to meditate on the ones that appeal to you and think about the kind of story that might lurk inside the ‘book’.
To please Google with a bit of jargon, let’s call is ‘reverse inspiration’: normally we start with a manuscript and try to capture its essence in a cover design, so here are the covers – what are the stories?
There are more ‘book cover’ images to play with HERE, and story-inspiration images HERE.
Happy writing!
And if you enjoy reading stories too, you will love A Biography of Story, A Brief History of Humanity
Of course my favourite is your top illustration of the Koru, Trish 🙂 And then a really inspiring post. I have spur of the moment, instinctive associations for each of your super photographs – but I’m keeping them secret for my ‘new possibilities’! xx
So pleased to have inspired you and look forward one day to reading the results, but you’re right, keep hold of your ideas, it is too easy to ‘talk them out’ instead of putting them onto the page. Happy new possibilities xx.
What fun – there are stories here! I worked with an artist once, my work prompting her work prompting my work and in the end an exhibition of poems and paintings. It was wonderful, the way the two bounced off each other. Ekphrasis – the process is called – which is an important-sounding word for something that was such fun.
What a lovely idea to work towards a joint exhibition. A friend of mine here tried to do that but it all became a bit ‘ekphraught’ – I think they are on speaking terms again now. Two others recently wrote a flash story together and that worked beautifully, a great story, too.