What’s an idea? As per wiki’s definition: An idea (Greek: δέα, from eidon: I saw) is an image existing or formed in the mind. Is it true? Well we never really cared to think too much about it. It could be true. All of us have similar experience when we get hold of an idea. Idea may strike you or you may strike an idea. Ideas are like atomic particles floating around us in the air. It’s about how lucky or persevering we are in being hit by one or some of those ideas. Ideas are like pebbles on a long beach and we are like blind humans. Either we hit them or we just keep walking on the sand soft to our feet. Ideas can hit you anytime anywhere. Or you may be hit by them similarly. You can look, feel, hear or taste an idea. It would be new, fresh and amazing. You can get an idea while driving, playing, watching movies, romancing, or even quarrelling. Wiki definition also says: The human capacity to contemplate ideas is associated with the capacity for reason, self-reflection, and the ability to acquire and apply intellect. Ideas give rise to concepts, which are the basis for any kind of knowledge whether science or philosophy. However, in a popular sense, an idea can arise even when there is no serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea).Simlilarly, as wiki describes, Inspiration in artistic composition refers to an irrational and unconscious burst of creativity. Literally, the word means “breathed upon.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_inspiration) Eh! Breathed upon by whom? Somebody, something, sometime, some event, some sound, some light. But, surely something.There have been many models and concepts of inspiration from ancient to modernist. Wiki has it again. So I am not writing. But my thoughts are as simple as my perception about inspiration.
Ideation requires inspiration. Or it could be the opposite. I have been trying to correlate these two. Who comes first? Who leads whom? I have been trying to explore on this. I believe an idea and an inspiration to realise the idea are extremely essential for giving birth to any masterpiece. Ideas get struck, get stumbled upon, get hit with, get captured while flashing before your imaginative eyes, or get saved during a communication exchange. Thereafter you need an inspiration to fructify the idea. The idea of a story may be in the mind of a writer. But it may not be possible to capture the idea in black and white immediately after it got conceived in the womb of the writer. Why? Because, to him, the act of writing needed an inspiration to begin, just like the idea itself. Every time there’s a new blockbuster movie raking the moolah, we talk about the story idea or the writer who wrote it. We also talk about the director who made it. In total although this creative output has been a collective effort, I am sure this must have required a muse or inspiration for the makers to realize their idea around the story.  Need to think more about it before I write more. Watch this space.