By Tricia Patras
Finding inspiration as a writer isn’t always as romantic as it sounds. For many of us, the creative process can feel more like a frustrating tug-of-war than a divine lightning bolt. There’s a common misconception, especially for non-fiction writers, that inspiration comes easy. After all, if we’re writing from our own lives, experiences, and opinions, shouldn’t the ideas flow naturally?
That’s what I thought, too.
But what I’ve learned is that inspiration isn’t about simply looking inward. In fact, the more I stayed in my own head, the more I felt creatively paralyzed. My words felt repetitive, my themes recycled, my perspective narrow. It wasn’t until I left my comfort zone, literally and figuratively, that I understood what it really means to find inspiration.
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a writing workshop in Florence, Italy. The city itself is a muse: cobblestone streets winding through centuries-old neighborhoods, the scent of espresso and fresh leather wafting through the air, bell towers chiming in the distance, and every corner punctuated by Renaissance art. I expected the city to instantly awaken some dormant part of my creativity, to flood my journal pages with poetic reflections. But while Florence was stunning, it didn’t hand me inspiration on a silver platter. What changed everything was how I was taught to interact with the world around me.
My professor took a completely unconventional approach to teaching. He wasn’t interested in talking about grammar or structure. Instead, he focused on perception, presence, and surprise. From the start, he made it clear: we weren’t here just to write. We were here to see differently and write about it.
One of his first assignments was deceptively simple: Leave the house without a plan. He urged me to leave my house without Google Maps or a plan. Essentially, the assignment was to just walk and write about where you end up; physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
At first, I was skeptical. I’m a planner. I like knowing where I’m going, how long it’ll take, what the outcome will be. But I followed his instructions. I stepped out of my apartment in the Oltrarno district, notebook in hand and phone on personal mode. I wandered through alleyways I hadn’t noticed before, past unmarked doorways, into small churches glowing with candlelight, and eventually found myself in a quiet garden, where an elderly man was sitting on a bench admiring the Duomo.
I sat near him and began to write, not about him, or the garden, or even Florence, but about how I felt walking without a map for the first time in years and about the mindless chatter of stranger passerby’s. That aimless journey became a meditation on surrendering control, on trusting the process. And that piece, titled “Writing with my feet” was later published in a travel anthology. It was one of the first times I realized that inspiration wasn’t something that found me, I had to go out and meet it.
Another time, my professor brought me to the English Cemetery in Florence. We stood by rows of moss-covered tombstones, many dating back to the 18th century.
He urged me to choose a tombstone to write about.
At first, it felt intrusive to fictionalize a stranger’s life. But as I sat there, I imagined a couple, Mario and Mario Manzone’s voice, what they might have wanted the world to know, what dreams they had, what heartbreaks they endured.
By encouraging me to project my empathy and imagination outward, that exercise helped me understand that inspiration often lies in the unknown, not the familiar. We don’t need to be experts on a subject to write about it; we just need to care enough to try.
My professor continued to push boundaries. In museums, he’d give me a single prompt to choose one artifact and write something inspired by it. Anything. Just don’t describe it—respond to it. I ended up writing a story about how Sex Sells Science, based off the sexualization of the Anatomical Venus in the La Specola Museum. That story was later picked up by a literary journal.
Over time, these unorthodox exercises shifted how I approached writing—and life. I began to look for stories in everyday objects and encounters. A conversation overheard in a café. A crooked window in a building that had been standing since the 1500s. A pair of shoes left on the banks of the Arno River. All of it became potential fuel for a narrative.
What surprised me most was how deeply this approach enriched my non-fiction writing. I used to believe that because I wrote essays and opinion pieces rooted in personal experience, my work was limited by my own life. But I learned that inspiration doesn’t just mean retelling events—it means finding new ways to interpret them. By engaging the world with curiosity, I added texture to my personal stories, blending them with metaphor, imagined dialogue, and universal themes.
By the end of the workshop, I had written more in three weeks than I had in the previous three months. And perhaps more importantly, I was proud of the work. Most of the pieces I created in Florence have since been published—something I never expected going into it.
So, what’s my advice to anyone searching for inspiration? It might sound unoriginal, but it works: Get out of your head. And get out of your house.
Leave the predictable routines. Go somewhere without a plan. Let your feet guide you. Let an object, a name, a stranger’s face, a forgotten artifact be the match that lights the fire. Inspiration doesn’t always come from within; it comes from movement, interaction, and curiosity.
Inspiration is not passive. It asks for your participation. Sometimes, it means walking without a map. Sometimes, it means writing a story about a woman whose only remaining legacy is her name on a stone. And sometimes, it means standing still in front of a painting until it starts speaking to you in words only you can hear.
And if you’re lucky, and brave enough to follow where those whispers lead, you might just find the story you were meant to write.
