Inspiration

[Aminar]

I'm curious what inspires some of the other authors on this site.

Not like what literary works have influenced your own, but what gives you ideas...

For instance, while I truly love my music, it has yet to inspire anything in my writing.  On the other hand, my mind has color schemes it loves that never show up in my music or reading, weird ones like Burgandy and Blue, Turquoise and Orange, Green and Orange, Green and Purple, etc.  My writing tries to use those color schemes and create a synesthetic feel that matches them.(Synesthetic feel is that the writing and ideas create those color schemes in my head.  Look up Synesthesia for a greater understanding of my minor insanity  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia.)

[Snowleopard]

My inspirations can be pictures or something written, or sometimes even music.
My mind wanders - a lot - and it takes some weird paths so I never quite know where I'll end up.
Saw a line in a mystery book by Rita Mae Brown about a ghost stag that manages to get a couple of hunters to shoot each other ever hunting season.  It had the feel of a local legend to me and may have led to what I'm currently working on.
Another time, an idea popped into my head - What if the Lady of the Lake was a bag lady?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

For me, the question has always been; how can you not get ideas ?  We live in a fractally complicated world;  I can't recall a day I didn't have a notion related to something or other pop into my brain based on something I heard or saw or came across. Not always a useful or sensible idea (I am trying to bury the Nabokov-Lovecraft mash-up notion my brain sprung on me yesterday somewhere I never have to think about it ever again)  but they are there. Pretty much everything I read or watch has me thinking about what it's trying to do, how it is doing it, whether I can learn from it, whether I have a reaction to or riff on it that's worth making into a story of its own, &c.

[Lord Rae]

I like art... especially abstract and fantasy art and artists. I like to take one or two small things from a picture and twist them around and make it my own and then use that to create a whole backstory for a character or a place.....stuff like that.

[Gruud]

Tool 

[Quantus]

Other...input, really.  Not music, or art so often, but other books, tv, film etc.  Often it will be something familiar, like a movie I've seen a million times playing in the background.  Sometimes Ill get good ideas spun of like science news or a wikipedia walkabout or something.  Its kinda random, really...

[LizW65]

For me, it's usually a character name or a title.  One will pop unbidden into my mind seemingly from nowhere, and I will begin to build a story around it.

[Snowleopard]

I know a script writer and she saves small news articles and blurbs from things like the newspapers.
The whole world is one big inspiration when you get down to it - it's whatever frequencies your brain is tuned into (music, color, art, news, nature, etc.) that work for you.