I finally took the plunge and registered my dot com domain name (previously I had a wordpress.com address). I was spurred on by the book “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon. I was further inspired to take the questions from the section of Show Your Work “Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities” and to answer the questions here, one at a time.

Where do you get your inspiration?

I get my inspiration from people and their work. Sure, there are times when I get the random idea out of nowhere, but I think that’s just the works I’ve read going through my subconscious and popping into my consciousness after being filtered through my perception.

In a broader sense, I get my inspiration from Pinterest, where I have a private board for story ideas. I pin photos and artwork that makes me think of characters, places or concepts. I get inspiration from my quotes collections, whether written out by hand or saved in MS Word documents that have stood the test of several computer transfers. (Credit goes to Dropbox for that, really.)

In the olden times (before I had an internet connection in the house), I had a Word document called “Iqra’s Mail” that contained everything from actual email to snippets of interestingness, samples of nothingness and everything in between. That “Iqra’s Mail” document is the parent of all my inspirational quote, art and website collections.

I get my inspiration from life. They say write what you know, some say write what you like (that’s Austin Kleon again), I like to do a bit of both. Write what you know of what you like, what you like of what you know, and any other combination you can cook in your mind.

Live, write; write, live. Both occupations feed off each other. That’s inspiration.