Goodreads asked Shelley Schanfield:

How do you get inspired to write?

Shelley Schanfield I've heard that there are two kinds of inspiration: Some say it can be something that's dictated to you, as William Blake said his poetry came from outside him. The other is that you see or hear something, and it sticks with you and inspires you to go on.

I've had both experiences. At times I feel the urgent need to sit down at my desk to catch a scene or a description or some dialog coming from somewhere, a dream or somewhere mysterious where stories are born—I don't know where, but I know I must put it down. This usually happens when I wake up in the middle of the night.

Other times, I see a hawk dive for some prey while driving to work, or I watch an episode of House of Cards and hear Frank Underwood say "Everything is about sex except for sex, which is about power," or I'm browsing through a book about Buddhism and read that courtesans were among his earliest and most ardent supporters, and I think, that's it. That would be a good scene, a character will take an animal's form. Or that's what drives the relationship between two particular characters, not love or sex, but power. Or a courtesan will perform a particularly important story before the royal Sakyan court, in front of Prince Siddhartha and his father the king.

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