It’s one thing to find inspiration in your daily life. Out fooling around with horses, hanging at the barn listening to gossip, leaning on a fence at a horse show or on the rail at the races — it’s easy to take home a hundred stories from one afternoon around horses and horse-people.

Barn life, after all, is made up of little moments that might not have anything to do with riding or training. Like stumbling upon a cat in the hay and trying to figure out a way to pull out a flake without disturbing his regal slumber — that one happened to me last week.

Adding some horse-time to my life is a tremendous boon after spending two years, while I was writing Ambition and now Turning For Home,  without any horses in my life. I was working off a whole lot of memories, and not much else.

That’s where online inspiration comes in.

When you’re searching for just the right turn of phrase to describe the way a horse’s expression lights up as he heads towards a fence.

When you’re trying to find a way to express the feel of your horse’s hot neck beneath your palm.

When you’re just plain thinking what would this horse/this rider do next in this situation I’ve put them in?

Thank goodness for the Internet, my friends.

I use Tumblr and Pinterest to gather together photos that I find inspirational. Sometimes, when I can’t eek out another useful description from the sea of black-and-white words, I need something a little more real and concrete. I go through photos, watching horses jump fences, horses jigging towards the starting gate, horses leaning over their stall webbing to get a glimpse of the hay-cart coming down the aisle. And that’s enough to bring back all the sights and sounds and smells and surfaces of the shed-row or the stable, and I can get back to work with a renewed sense of purpose.

My Pinterest board for Turning For Home includes cross-country jumping, racetrack mornings, Ocala views, and just plain equine silliness.
Follow Natalie’s board Turning For Home – Alex & Alexander # 3 on Pinterest.//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js

My Tumblr is similar, with a different variety of horses — the Tumblr is more about fine art photography most of the time, whereas the Pinterest might contain links to articles or just certain moments that I find evocative. The Tumblr is at ottb.tumblr.com.

Check them out to get a taste of the online inspiration I use every day in my writing! I’ll continue to add images and posts even after Turning For Home is released — it’s the kind of beauty you never want to give up.