Goodreads asked Colin Matthews:

How do you get inspired to write?

Colin Matthews Funny you should ask. I just recently wrote on my blog (colinmatthewsblog.com) about that. The title of that recent post had to do with the nation's war on drugs, but that is what got me started. I had been vocalizing objections to the absurdity and futility of that war.

Because, I guess, they got sick of hearing those vocalized objections, and because I wasn’t actually doing anything about it but venting my frustration, some friends and family kept saying, “Write it down! You know this stuff, write something about it.” They knew I had a Ph.D. and was trained in the medical sciences, but writing scholarly journal articles or reports about scientific research as I had in the past was not what I thought was called for in this case.

There have been, and still are, significant other writers addressing the futility and social destructiveness of that war. I did not have any real interest in attempting to add my little bit to the non-fiction literature on the subject. Nor did I want to be simply an echo chamber of sorts. As it so happened, one of my other traits with which those friends and family were familiar was my habit, when the spirit moved me over the course of less than half a minute, of cognitively manufacturing tiny vignettes in my mind’s eyes and ears, instantaneously experienced mini-micro short stories really, which I then laughingly told them about, as in “guess what just zipped through my head”. My re-telling of these flash tales seemed to find a receptive audience (Or should I say captive?).

Did these quick and dirty vignettes represent a visit from my muse? Did I now have a muse? A literature muse I did not know anything about? Was I becoming a fiction writer without knowing it? Was this an example of behavioral self-evolution in action? So many questions. So many things my characters wanted to say and do in their own little made-up world.

Who would have thunk it? Colin Matthews a novelist? --- You’ve got to be kidding!

So, one day more recently I decided to write a novel with that issue, the “War on Drugs”, as one significant theme. That platform allowed me freedom to include as well some interesting thematic explorations, fictional character development, and plot action regarding additional issues of importance for a solid story --- issues perhaps at most only a very tiny notch below the corrosive effects of an absurd drug war policy and its inexcusably harsh punishment of addiction in lieu of treatment.

• Did I hear someone ask about American border security and immigrant problems?
• Are heightened fears of terrorist penetration in this country reasonable? Can we ever be free of all risk?
• What about the risk of xenophobia to us as individuals? To our country’s nature? Some other fear?
• Is representative democracy protected? Or in trouble? Can government paranoia be diagnosed and cured?
• Will we in the United States always be allowed to say what we want without government reprisal?
• Would it be of interest to gain some idea of what goes on in the upper reaches of the Amazon rainforest?
• Gotcha on that last one! How about that recent film “Embrace of the Serpent”? Further exploration?
• Did I want to jump at the chance to include some serious crime and suspense? And some political intrigue? And honest-to-badness danger?

I am continuing to post on my blog about these kinds of things having to do with my writing. Please feel free to have a look.

Thanks for asking the question.

Colin Matthews

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