Thanks. I need ideas, though. Some of the advice I've taken to heart is that you must get into the habit of seeing stories everywhere. We do it all the time--think of stories, that is--but miss them, dismiss them, subconsciously, like the way we swat inappropriate thoughts. "Wow, she has a fantastic ass... SWAT What a charming young lady." I've been practicing wherever I go. You watch strangers and make up stories about them and not be afraid that they're completely wrong. And I was in the gym a few days ago (Planet Fatness, it's cheap), and there was this old lady working out on a machine with her back to me. She must have been in her mid sixties, but both of her arms were embroidered with tattoos. "Okay," I think, "back in her twenties she dated a guy who was trying to break into the tattooing trade, and he begged her and begged her for the chance to practice on her skin..." She finished with the machine and walked past me, close enough for me to make out one of the tattoos on her arm. It was a checkered flag and a caption that I _just_ managed to scan the beginning of: "I drove at...", but I caught no more. She disappeared into the ladies' locker room. Okay, first story is wrong. New story. She was one of the first female NASCAR drivers back in the 1970s, paving the way for the likes of Danica Patrick. After a few years of racing she hung-up her helmet to start a family, and a little while ago she saw the fifth birthday of her first granddaughter. The girl's father--Tattoo lady's son--got her a Barbie PowerWheel, and she alighted to it like second nature. Now she's challenging all the boys on the street, and winning. Because while they have G.I. Joe PowerWheels that have a slightly higher top speed, she knows how to corner. Then one day... Then one day... Fender bender? In a plastic PowerWheels? Uh... Tattoo lady lost her best friend when a weak weld in the roll-cage broke and she died in a pile-up. Bleah... too cliche. She um... she must'a... did... a thing. This is why writers don't like to be asked "where do you get your ideas?"
Really? I tend to follow the breadcrumbs on both fronts. I don't see why, "Wow, she has a fantastic ass . . ." can't exist with "but she's an awful liar" or "and a real humanitarian" or "for an empty husk of a primate" can't exist together in the same way that someone who is now an upstanding, functional human being might have lived . . . vividly in the past.We do it all the time--think of stories, that is--but miss them, dismiss them, subconsciously, like the way we swat inappropriate thoughts. "Wow, she has a fantastic ass... SWAT What a charming young lady."