Publisher's Weekly ran interviews with several authors regarding their latest work for youngsters. There were a few that prompted some thoughts.
For instance, Chris Van Allsburg explained why he decided to switch from fantasies to a biography of the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel--a 62 year old woman! He said, "A year and a half ago, in an effort to keep my work interesting to myself, I decided to explore another genre."
Thought: They say a change is a good as a rest. If you're starting to feel stale in your usual genre, what other one might refresh you?
Meg Cabot told why she decided to write "Abandon," a new series loosely based on the Greek myth of Persephone: "My mom, the English major, had an Edith Hamilton mythology book lying around and you know how mothers are always saying, ‘Go read a book!’ so I picked that up and fell in love with Persephone. It might have been the illustration of Hades dragging her into his realm that did it."
Thought: Is there a story from your childhood that inspires you and that you might want to use as the basis of something you write? (I wasn't into mythology as a kid--unless you consider "The Lone Ranger" a myth, which I guess it is...hmmm...watch this space...)
With John Flanagan it wasn't a quote but how his "Rangers Apprentice" series came into being: he wrote a set of short stories, one each week for five months, that he wrote to encourage his son to read.
Thought: Would doing this for a child in your life--or even an imaginary child--help you to have the discipline to write regularly? What kind of series would yours be?
Brandon Mull, the author of "Beyonders," tells where he found his inspiration for how to have his protagonist enter another world: "I was at the Hogle Zoo [in Salt Lake City, Utah], and I saw a hippo yawn and its mouth was so wide I thought, ‘You could fit a dude in there,’ so I had my character fall into the hippo tank at the zoo. In fact, he falls not only into the enclosure, but into the gaping mouth of the hippo himself—and he crosses into Lyria that way."
Thought: What are you going out to do in the world, like going to the zoo, that can give you fresh ideas?
(For 75 fresh ideas about how to be more creative, get my book, "Creativity Now!" published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offlne retailers.)
