When I’m writing a certain project, I generally have a ‘tool kit’ of inspirational things that I go to when I need to get the juices flowing. Sometimes it’s a song, or a series of pictures, or a passage of fiction, or a physical object… you get the idea.

When I was working on The World That Forgot How to Dance, my primary jump-starters were these two videos. I normally watched them before every writing session, and sometimes in the middle of a writing session if I got stuck, and sometimes right before bed if I wanted my subconscious to keep working on the story while I slept.

The first one comes from one a scene in Firefly (Oh yes, I am indeed a Browncoat) where River learns a village dance by watching and then joins in. (The video with the full scene has been deleted, but you get the basic idea from this one…) 

I love so many things about this: the music, the cinematography, the importance of the moment to River’s character arc… When I watch this, I’m reminded of how dance has the power to make someone feel completely happy, and completely themselves, even when everything else is wrong.

The second video is from Tangled, where Rapunzel (which was NOT in my computer’s spellchecker?! Shame!) is celebrating her visit to the city by pulling everyone into a group dance. (Fast forward to 1 min)

As much as dance is an individual journey, it can also be a journey for a community. This scene fills me with the overwhelming emotion of “I wish I was there!” I love the collective energy that builds between the dancers, and how hesitant they are at first, but how one girl’s courage draws out the best in all of them.

I started and stalled on this project many times, but whenever I saw those two scenes, it reminded me that I really wanted this dancing story to exist. I wanted a story that made me feel all of the excitement and joy of those two videos.

If you got the warm fuzzies from watching those videos and want to see the story that grew out of them, you can find the print version Here or the ebook Here. (And the e-book is free for the next five days, so don’t miss out!)