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Where do you get your ideas?
There are two questions authors are always asked. 1. Is this book autobiographical? 2. Where do you get your ideas? And because it’s the way I am, I’m going to answer the second one first.
When I lived in Vermont, I joined a women’s group of visual artists. The head of our group was my best friend. She and I would travel across the U.S. We would be traveling down a road and see a tall building with a mural on the space. We both pointed and told each other, “Look.”
She would go on about the colors used in the mural. “Fabulous.” I would read the words aloud and rave on how the words had several different connotations. “Fabulous.” We were looking at the same building but saw two different aspects of the mural.
Do you remember when you and your partner decided to have a baby? After that, everywhere you looked you saw pregnant women.
Do you remember when you bought your car? You knew you wanted a certain color of blue. Everywhere you drove, you saw a car with that certain color of blue.
Like a Google Alert, what is your mind geared to notice. What factor you detect? What ingredient is the most important that constituents the blend of your life? “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.” ~Buddha Same essential component.
When you are thinking story, the stories occur around you. In NYC, you see a dog walker walking 12 dogs of all sizes. You get “Monster-in-Law.” I was a foster mom for 8 years and one of my girls told me how going from home to home, the lesson she learned was always find out where the toilet paper was kept before you went. From that, “The Throwaway Piece.”
The ideas come from your eyes. What you see. How you see it. What you make of it. What you hear. When you smell it. A stuffed up nose and you walk by the bakery. The next day, no stuffed up nose, you smell the bakery a block away. Because you’re hungry. If you weren’t hungry, you might see the newspaper vendor first.
When I sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, I’ll usually grab a left-behind newspaper to read. I also usually stuff it into my purse to take home. Always there is an article about a man who… or a woman that… or kids who went… or a child found… and I have a new story angle.
I read this on Tomas Hispanic Tips newsletter: Eridania Rodriguez, Cleaning Woman, Vanishes At Skyscraper Near Ground Zero :: from www.huffingtonpost.com
In the comments, tell us how you would take this bit of information and make it into a story. What would you story be about? The five best plot ideas will win a copy of The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos By Margaret Mascarenhas. Hurry. You have all week to add your comment. I’ll announce the winner in my next Sunday column.
Thank you for visiting,
Jo Ann