Last post (“How To Be Inspired – Part 1: During COVID-time“), I talked about how it’s possible to find inspiration even with the restraints of the COVID Pandemic, specifically related to technology. We live in a era where millions of stories are already recording in multiple media and we no longer need to go through those stories ourselves to be inspired by them.
Today, I want to take up a different angle and describe a different kind of inspiration.
For centuries, we have heard of dragons, royal expeditions, superheroes, explorers, space exploration, time travel, all the extradordinary adventures…
Tangible.
Physical.
But what about the other kinds of adventures? The ones that are not so tangible, but are just as exciting.
Spiritual, emotional, mental, overall psychological.
Daydreaming, actual dreaming, overthinking, sudden epiphanies, falling in love, spiritual awakening, intellectual stimulation, meditation…
Yes, those grand extraordinary adventures, epic to a fault, filled with battles and villains and heros… they’re pretty cool.
But so are all the simpler adventures that don’t happen as simply. That require thinking and feeling.
It’s a different kind of inspiration. Stories that only you can experience and no one else.
Because if two people climb the Eiffel Tower, they’ll both say it’s high – that doesn’t change. But one will say it’s exhilerating and one will say it’s frightening.
Intellectual and emotional perceptions – they are individualized to a fault.
Which is why I believe (and this is just an opnion, but it is my opnion) that they are more important than those tangible adventures.
It’s these that definite literature.
Lessons taught. Profound observation and revelation.
However, it is those tangible adventures that create genre fiction – Action, Thriller, Horror, Romance, Drama, Comedy, you get the idea.
The difference between Hemingway and Hallmark.
But sometimes you have a mashup and it turns out wonderfully – like Disney fairytales. Morals to learn and adventures to vicariously experience.
The best kind of story.
A merging of Literature and Genre Fiction.
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