My Inspirations

When I say my inspiration, I am not talking about the ink monsters (not this time), I am talking about the fact that a few minutes ago I was reading a blog post and listening to music at the same time.

Do not fear. All shall become clear.
 
The first of my two inspirations is Kristin Cashore, my favourite writer, whose blog post I was reading just now. Ms Cashore is an American author of three YA fantasy books: Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue, all three of which are amazing. As an aspiring writer, it feels only natural to be greatly inspired by someone whose writing style is sensational, whose characters are very close to my heart, and whose fictional worlds come to life in my mind so easily. I mentioned (or may have mentioned?) in my previous blog post that Bitterblue is one of the things that inspired me to start writing one particular project.


I have been reading Kristin Cashore's blog for almost two years (according to the emails I signed up to receive every time a new post is published, and which I do not seem to delete). There are a good few posts concerning writing and the writing process which I find very helpful and encouraging (her comments about the complexity of writing multiple projects simultaneously in her most recent blog post and also repeated reminders that all first drafts are always terrible are very reassuring). Furthermore, I find her books, and her blog posts, funny. My sense of humour appears to have found a match. :)

My second inspiration is Sharon den Adel, the lead singer of Dutch symphonic metal group Within Temptation, who just happen to be my favourite band, and it was Within Temptation's music which I was listening to as I read Ms Cashore's blog post earlier. Ms den Adel is a fantastic singer and she also writes a good deal of the songs, along with the other band members. I love the songs she sings to pieces, but the music is not the main reason that Ms den Adel specifically (as opposed to the band as a whole) is my second inspiration. We already know she is very talented, but she's also a mother of three, and before her career in Within Temptation she worked in the fashion industry, and now designs both the dresses she wears and the band merchandise (when I found this out, I suddenly felt honoured to own a Within Temptation t-shirt).

I'm going to have to be careful not to start going off on one about the music industry here, but I have a lot of respect for female lead singers in metal* because they all just seem so genuine. They're all fantastically talented and very hard-working, and they all make music simply because they love music. They're all lovely people and none of them have lost their dignity to fame. And before I say anything else about singers/bands generally, I shall make a hasty return to Sharon den Adel. As I mentioned before, she comes across in interviews etc as a very genuine person, with a sense of humour and also humility (which again, is a common trait in metal bands, I have just realised). She just seems to me to be a wonderful human being who sings beautiful and inspiring songs.

On top of the reasons for both of these women being inspirations to me, I'd like to add that me being a humongous fangirl is probably also a factor. :)

*I'm only talking about the women in metal here because with regards to metal bands, the bands I listen to are generally female-fronted, so I can't really comment on the male-fronted bands as I don't know very much about them.