Barn life is made up of tiny moments like this.
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.
Remembering the simple pleasure of grazing a horse until he’s dry.
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.