So, today, the Level Best Authors promotion group I’m a part of had their first joint post on a host blog. The question we all answered was ‘where do you get your inspiration and idea for the story?’ The short answer is, all over the place!
99.9% of the time, my inspiration comes from someone who has related an experience so engaging and intriguing that it has to have a place somewhere in my book. Or in the case of my latest book, a conversation with a stranger led to the entire story! Read about it here. We are so often afraid of approaching others, or taking deep dives in conversation with people we don’t know very well, aren’t we? Perhaps even more so now that the masking has occurred. I’m hoping hugs and deep-seated conversations will resume once we return to an unmasked society, but in the meantime it’s a bit harder to ferret out inspiration as an author, because gatherings have become distanced. Both physically and emotionally.
People are so interesting, and have so many stories. And in the current climate in America, I would assume there’s a lot of loneliness and longing for connection. Even though it feels alien and awkward, I appreciate the technology that allows us to stay in touch or have events and meetings in spite of the distancing required in person. I now have roughly three ZOOM events or calls a week, and more on the horizon. I’m pretty comfortable with the technology now, but I’m wondering if this is a precursor of what our society as a whole is embracing in the future? It is a scary prospect to me.
Give me a good, lively conversation with someone new and I’ll leave with four or five ideas for characters or stories or scenes. But sadly, our deep conversations are muted at present, and we must slog through this ‘new normal’ with resolve and hope. Americans are not ones to live their lives behind masks, and I trust that, like most viruses, this one will recede and we can tiptoe back to those interesting conversations and friendly smiles. In person.
To read our joint posts about idea inspiration for authors on ‘The Wickeds’ blog, click here.
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Olivia Callahan’s quiet, orderly life is shattered when she regains consciousness in a hospital and discovers she is paralyzed and cannot remember a thing. The fragmented voices she hears around her help her piece together that an apparent assault landed her in the hospital, but nobody knows who attacked her, or why. After a chilling struggle to survive, she awakens from a coma unable to remember what happened to her or anything at all, except she has been told she is an entirely different person. Or is she?
Now, in spite of a brain injury that has rewired her personality, Olivia is on a mission to reclaim her life. As clarity surfaces and she starts to understand who she was, she is shocked. Had she really been that person? And if so, does she want her old life back?
2019 was a mess.
and sell a house, then pack and arrange a huge move. It didn’t have the strength to nurse-maid a husband’s recovery from shoulder surgery, nor did it have the wisdom to help a daughter navigate through a tragic miscarriage, another scary pregnancy and a brain injury when her baby was born. It didn’t particularly enjoy the heart-wrenching disappointment of losing a publishing contract after two years of fighting for one because the publisher decided to close its doors, or the dark discouragement that followed.
God never promises us a life without messes. He did however, promise to be with us through them, and use them to help us grow in grace, perseverance, patience, gentleness and kindness if we seek Him with a mind to ask for help. As I’ve looked back over the years, my life is messy but it is also full of fabulous milestones. Milestones that I couldn’t have accomplished in my own strength. As I whined about the messes and asked him for help, God gave me His strength for my weakness, His mercy for my harshness, His perseverance for my longing to give up, His forgiveness for others who had offended me when I had no idea how to forgive.
along the way. Milestones of less anxiety and hopelessness. More reliance on the truth of God’s awesome promises and less reliance on voices shouting at us to be more, buy more, do more. 2019 was a year of big messes, but fortunately, the bigger the mess, the bigger the milestone. He promises to uses everything (even the failures) for good in our lives, and I believe it.
later, so how on earth could it take so long to find a publisher?
happen on my timetable. Oh I can bluster something in, ignore red flags, knock down doors that should remain closed and make the wrong thing happen and spend a couple years on a disaster detour, but I’ve done that before and don’t want to do it again.
who I am. So I went sighing and moaning to God and gave him my desire to be a novelist, told Him it was all His anyway, so there.
