its important not only to take inspiration from good things but bad things as well. there are few driving forces more powerful than “this fucking sucks i could do it better”
so my copy of Watership Down has a foreword by the author where he says it was originally a story he told his children over many bedtimes and car rides
until one night he was reading to them from a book instead, and was disappointed in the quality and said I COULD WRITE BETTER THAN THAT!
and his his children were like WELL DO IT THEN!
so thats how we got the book Watership Down
….which, to me, in some ways, is still paying that forward
because, I LOVE the book, love the whole world created in it
and yet..
it’s the author’s first novel– and in some ways, you can TELL it’s his first novel.
parts of it feel, to me, like flaws, or at least things that an experienced writer would not do
and yet
those are the parts that inspire me the most
because they make the idea of creating a book like that feel …relatable …achievable… within reach.
I was reading that book during some of my most difficult times of writing, and without it I do NOT think I would’ve finished the things I was writing at the time.