Famous Authors Find Story Inspiration All Around Them

Jack London once wrote, “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.”

Inspiration can come to writers in the strangest of ways; we see this throughout the history of many celebrated authors. Sometimes it just takes recognizing that a “maybe” or a “what if” can turn into a character, a plot, or even a whole world.

Take J.R.R. Tolkien, for example. This college professor found his inspiration in the middle of grading papers. When he was gifted with a blank sheet of paper in the midst of exams, he paused and wrote, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Of course, most people now know what a hobbit is, but Tolkien’s idea was only an inkling at this point; he still had to unpack all of its meaning. If it weren’t for this small moment, we would not be able to enjoy The Lord of the Rings and its fantastical world.