"Brutus! Give me back the baby's diaper! That's disgusting!" I said sternly to my 7 year-old Boxer. Brutus, as usual, ignored my command and pranced off into the living room, carrying the soiled, soggy diaper like a prized toy.
"Brutus! Damn it, dog, if you don't give me back that diaper, I'm selling you to the glue factory! I mean it this time."
"Honey," my husband, Wally, said, from his elected position on the couch (front and center of the hi-def TV), "they don't take dogs at the glue factory. It's horses." He ripped his eyes away from drag racing long enough to glance at me. "Besides, I don't think they do that anymore."
"Whatever," I muttered, my mind going off onto one of its "tangents," while I simultaneously chased the 60 lb. fawn colored dog (who was definitely going to glue factory--no question) around the house.
As I stalked the dog, I imagined a puppy mill where the owners, looking to create the next "it" breed of dog, accidentally mix monkey DNA with a Boxer puppy and end up with a "Moxer" or a "Bonkey." They'll call him "X," short for X29752 and he'll possess the ability bark and chase birds while swinging from limb to limb (scratching its butt, of course). Hmmm, is there a story there?
"To the victor go the spoils!" I shouted, snagging the diaper from Brutus' jowls.
After disposing of said disgusting diaper, I looked at Wally, who (big surprise) was still parked on the couch. "Are you ready? We've got to drop the kids off at my mom's in twenty minutes."
Wally held out a hand, "Just five more minutes, honey. I want to see (insert name of random drag racer here) finish this round."
I rolled my eyes. The Just Five More Minutes Honey clause is one I'm familiar with. After all, I created it in my house.
TEN minutes later....
"Why don't you calm down?" Wally asked, loading our son into his car seat. "You're so high-strung all the time."
Oh, I'll give you high-strung. "The reason I'm so tense, is because we're supposed to be at Mom's in fifteen minutes and it's a thirty minute drive."
Wally smirked as he slid in the driver's seat. "Did you take your crazy pills today?"
I socked him lightly in the arm. "Not funny the first time you said it. Not funny the gagillion other times."
Backing out of the driveway, he grinned. "Hey, now when I ask you if you're on drugs, you can say yes and mean it." He laughed at his ingenuity.
Folding my arms across my chest, I leaned back into the seat and thought of a GREAT idea for a story. A woman with a newly diagnosed mood disorder murders her husband and buries his remains on the 10 acre property she shares with him (this may come back to bite me in the butt should I ever decide to "method act" out this idea).
As we drove along the highway, I gazed out along the gently rolling hills and large expanses of farmland. Tuning out NASCAR on AM 1360, I imagined a farm that had been in a certain family for decades that was being threatened by torrential rains and a sudden invasion of ants.
As I looked at the car driving alongside us, I wondered, "Where are they going? What are they doing?"
In my mind, they were a couple on an awkward blind date. The woman has just gotten out of a nasty marriage, and after a year of solitude, has decided to dip her foot in the dating pool again. The man has trust issues of his own and only went on the date because his older sister guilted him into it. Little do they know, this first date was going to take them into a whirlwind love affair filled with tension, inner conflict, great sex, emotional black moments for each of them, and finally, a Happily Ever After.
"Honey? We're here."
I looked out at my parents' familiar blue ranch and blinked. Wow, that'd gone quick, I thought. My mind, of course, was still back on that lonely stretch of highway, with the couple I'd named Harry and Grace.
Note:
Ironically, I had a difficult time finding an idea for my blog today. This is a little on the different side, but I thought if I wrote it in story format, you might enjoy it more. Anyway, that's often how I get my ideas. Where do y'all get yours?
9 comments:
Great blog, Jen!!
Loved the bonkey!
My ideas come from everywhere! Only I think in terms of how it was. As in, driving through Shaniko I look out across the sandy soil, rabbit brush, sagebrush and rolling hills of nothing and wonder what the people moving to the lush Oregon territory thought when they laid eyes on that. They had to have thought someone lied about the lushness of Oregon!
Or I come across an abandon, old shack or homestead and wonder who lived here, how did they make their living, did they have neighbors, what would have been the closest town?
Oh yeah, my mind wanders, but not quite like yours! LOL Great writing by the way!
Jen, well, you talented little thing, you! That was fun! I, too, like the Bonkey (you might want to patent that name before someone steals it away!)
It always amazes me where writers get ideas. Sometimes, for me, it's from other art--a painting, a song. One time I remember hearing about a group of older musicians who formed a band and that got me to thinking about a group of musicians who break up and want to reunite fifty years later. Maybe one of them has disappeared. Maybe a grand-daughter is determined to find the missing woman...
Or I'll drive fifteen miles to a grocery store, start to get out of the car and realize I left my purse at home and that gets me to thinking how dependent I am on that purse, but what if I couldn't just drive home and get money, what if there was no money to get? What if there were no friends to help? What if there was no family? Wait, what if I didn't even know who I was?
Ideas are everywhere and for me, like with you and Paty (and I suspect all of us), the "what if" leap frog of questions forms the basis of the beginning of a plot.
Fun blog, wonderful seeing an example of your writing, loved the whole make up a story about the folks in the car. And isn't it funny how the deeper we go inside ourselves, the faster the outside world moves?
Alice
I get ideas in many, many ways--usually unexpected. Here is a recent example of a more unexpected idea--from a Chat this week with the marvelous Eli.
[21:50] Eli: hives couldn't have been much fun either
[21:50] wavybrains: the hives sucked, for both of us
[21:50] wavybrains: we believe we found what triggered it--and it was his SOAP
[21:51] Eli: really? wild
[21:51] wavybrains: I had a second minor case and after believing that I might be allergic to DH, I did some investigating
[21:51] wavybrains: because Allergic to Sex is a great book title, but bad reality :)
[21:52] wavybrains: Hell I like that so much, it may have to go in the purple book of project ideas
[21:58] wavybrains: that might make a cool love story
[21:58] emcamp99: yeah. it would :)
[21:58] emcamp99: You are such a hopeless romantic.
[21:59] wavybrains: It's how I can turn books like "Allergic to Sex" into weepy love stories at the end
[21:59] emcamp99: ROFL
Thus, the book Allergic to Sex was born and duly listed in the purple notebooks of books that will take me until I am dead to write. Later, as I was falling asleep, I started to think more about this heroine--should she be ACTUALLY allergic to sex or merely think that she is. Obviously it's a romantic comedy, but what tilt? Gradually I got a picture of her, him, and the conflict--it emerged as a novella/short romance, light and fluffy.
I am excellent at ideas--it's the execution I'm still working on.
Wavy - I have a recipe box with index cards with story ideas, names, and characters, and the small 6x8 notebooks with the start of story ideas in them. That doesn't even count for the three other petticoat books, the other two spirit books and the Pinkerton series!
I think all writers have more ideas than they have time to write!
And what a cool title and book idea! And I can see you writing it with your voice!
Oh crap! Eli, I thought I got all of your im id's changed--my apologies! And blogger won't let me change them without tanking the comment.
ROFL, Wavy. Damn, I'm good! Giving you ideas. Hee hee.
GREAT blog, Jen. I got a real kick out of it, and so fun to read your writing.
I don't know where I get my ideas. Sometimes from news stories, things I see on TV, sometimes I'll read a passage in a book by another author and something in there strikes a cord with me and voila! a whole new idea is born.
Always fun "seeing" into the mind of other writers.
I often get my ideas from dreams. Or newspaper clippings. My next book is coming from a real news story. At least the basic premise. I have all those "what if" questions mulling the idea over now. We'll see what my brain marinates it into and if it's worth spending half a year of my life romancing the notion.
I also get ideas like Alice -- from other art. Especially really great song lyrics, or bits and pieces of this book and that book and this magazine article, and that snippet of conversation I overheard on a train four years ago...ideas come from everywhere.
Thanks for the honest peek inside the workings of your brain, Jen (and your family life).
Fun blog, Jen. 8^)
Wavy, make your heroine allergic to dogs and the hero is a werewolf. Hee hee!
Ideas. They come from everywhere. The other night while checking into my hotel in Wilsonville there was a tv in the lobby, and C&N was on. Some scientist was talking about gene manipulation to strengthen our immune systems and make us impervious to cancer. Now THAT would be one helluva story. I'm thinking about the possible consequences of messing with nature that way. Big time bad news. That's a lot of what my first book, Project Resurrection, was about. An ambitious project, but a fascinating one. 8^)
Karen
Great writing, Jen! One thing leads to another in my brain all the time. Just this morning I was thinking about organ donors and donees and wondered when it will become possible to donate and receive a new brain. Would the donated brain still love the people they loved in their former body? Would the people who loved the donee still love her even though she has a whole different brain in that familiar loved body? This sounds like one for a science fiction writer, which I'm not. So it's up for grabs if anyone wants it.
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