What inspires creative thoughts and ideas in your writing?
For me, poetic metaphors fuel my thinking.
Music has always been a great source of those metaphors. My favorite songs are those with poetic beauty in their lyrics; my favorite songwriters, those who can turn a phrase that lasts long after the beat stops. Lyrical lines you can picture, relate to, believe, identify with—and travel with.
I’ll give you a couple of examples.
One of my favorite songwriters is Ken Block of the band Sister Hazel. (All the band members are excellent, in my opinion—a band of poets!) In a song Ken co-wrote with his father, Al, called Out There, we find the phrase:
“Take me to sunrise from indigo.”
The song itself is a heart’s cry, a longing for companionship—for someone to share life’s journey with, to walk alongside.
But the metaphor is the beauty for me. Indigo represents the deepest, darkest, coldest part of the night or storm; sunrise represents dawn, renewed light, renewed hope, a brand-new day.
How does this inspire my writing?
I write for people who hurt. People who know all too well the indigo. People who long for sunrise.
That metaphor inspires me to prayerfully consider those I write for, to relate to them from my own nights of indigo and my own longings for new light and hope. And somewhere in that thinking, I begin discovering other expressions and other ways of conveying those things for us all.
A second example comes from the Elevation Worship song Same God, written by Chris Brown, Brandon Lake, Pat Barrett, and Steven Furtick. The song expresses dependence on divine strength to face personal, modern-day battles. Verse after verse recalls an instance in the life of a biblical figure where God showed up, “calling on the God of” Jacob, Moses, and others.
In the second verse, where “the God of David” is called upon, we find this phrase:
“I may not face Goliath, but I’ve got my own giants.”
For whatever reason, that phrase struck me deep.
I often feel as though I’m whining—and, indeed, much of the time I probably am—because my “needs” and my “suffering” pale in comparison to those of so many around me. Certainly, I’m not facing the hardships these biblical greats faced.
But that line reminds me: I rely upon the same God. And He hears me and loves me just the same.
That idea impacts my writing. In fact, just recently I wrote a piece on Numbers 13, where Caleb and the spies return to report on the Promised Land. The spies reported back in fear, essentially, There are giants there! We’d better not go!
But that’s not what Caleb saw. And that’s not what he concluded.
(Of course, I knew it could become a Big Buts post the moment I heard it.)
More specifically, it became a Pivot Post. And here’s the pivot:
Faith doesn’t deny the size of what stands before us. It remembers the size of the One who stands with us. God’s got this giant before you.
And that’s how inspiration often works for me.
A songwriter turns a phrase. A metaphor catches my attention. Something in it connects with something I’ve experienced, something I believe, or someone I’m thinking about. I carry it around awhile. Turn it over. Look at it from different directions.
Eventually, something else comes out.
For writers, inspiration comes from as many different places and sources as there are different writers.
So, what inspires you? What provides grist for your mill? (Another metaphor a man named Richard Griffin used often … that stuck.)
Pay attention to those things. They may be where your next words are waiting.
