I don’t know about you, but I enjoy finding creative inspiration more or less anywhere. One thing I enjoy in particular is browsing through online ads that appear in Sunday newspapers. I’ve stopped getting a paper because of my commitment to reducing my paper usage, but I love to read online. Target is a particular favorite. The interior designer in me goes crazy when I see all of the back to college items because I imagine what I would do with all of them. It also helps me visualize my characters’ homes and how they might choose to decorate their surroundings.
This factor became especially important in my second novel length WIP called Keeping Light, which is set on different planets deep in space but features teenage to early 20s characters who have a dustinct style of their own. My protagonist, Abby, was easy to design because I based some of her taste on my own at that age, but with others I needed to turn to visual inspiration. Her best friend has a more extroverted personality to whom animal prints and bold colors were suited.
Sometime I’d like to make a storyboard like designers use to showcase the materials for a certain room for a similar purpose, only show the rooms my characters will inhabit.
Etcetera 