Wherever I am, I try to look for inspiration. It could be anything. Some scenery, a phrase somebody uses, the physical shape, size, appearance of someone I see in the street.
When I was in and around Bangalore in India, visiting some schools with other teachers almost two years ago, I was expected to teach a science lesson on rock formation to very young children. This expectation was a complete surprise to me and I'd come unprepared. But given a couple of days' notice, I managed to pick up a chunk of granite on a visit to a vast granite quarry. So instead of going straight for a lesson involving the comparison of different rocks and their proerties, I made up a story called The Stone Princess. The kids loved it.
Also, on the same visit, I bought a chowkabarra board game. It's a bit like ludo. That led me to write a story called The Giant Babala in which the game appears. As well as those two, I did another called The Indigo Jinni involving two characters called Sontash and Priti, the names of people I met there.
Needless to say, and not just for the sake of my writing, the entire Indian experience was inspiring.
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