Here's An Idea
By Madonna Dries Christensen
Writers are often asked where they get ideas. The short answer is: Everywhere.
William Styron says he dreamed about a woman with a number tattooed on her arm. He put aside the book he was having trouble writing and wrote Sophie’s Choice. Robert Louis Stevenson reportedly dreamed the idea for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My first writing instructor, Peggy Teeters, advised, “Save articles and stories by writers whose work you admire or whose subject interests you. The clippings will provide ideas for stories of your own.” She was right. Sifting through my collection always inspires me.
An acquaintance told me she’d thought about being a writer but she didn’t know what to write about. Perhaps she was more enamored with being a writer than with actually writing. Serious writers usually have more ideas than they can handle. No matter what else writers are doing, they are at the same time gleaning bits and pieces from what they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
The fruity essence of apples at a produce stand inspired my first published piece Simply Delicious. The fragrance of four o’clocks wafting from my husband’s garden took me back to childhood, to my mother’s window box. From that evoked memory came Collected Scents. Remembering the smell and horrible taste of cod liver oil, I wrote It’s Good For You, a humor piece on this elixir of the 1940s.
Entering the library in my hometown in Iowa, I was embraced by a distinctive odor so familiar that, had I been blindfolded, I would have known I was in my childhood library. A compatible blend of old books, book binding paste, newspaper ink, furniture oil, floor wax and the dry, dusty odor steam radiators emit gave the library this aromatic charm. Guardian Of The Books is a reminiscence about that small town library and its librarian. I expanded on the idea with a tribute to my hometown: I Still Call It Home, published in the anthology Where The Heart Is; A Celebration of Home.
On a visit to my ancestral farm in Wisconsin, I stood in the doorway of the cavernous dilapidated barn, wrapped in the silence of the countryside. The present owner’s pronounced European accent conjured the presences of my German paternal great-grandparents. These benevolent ghosts led me through a typical day at the farm one hundred years earlier. The energy from that imagined excursion, hosted by the spectral images, led to Sojourner In The Past, published in The Wind-Mill, a genealogy magazine.
The Midwest is my sense of place. Born and raised in Iowa, I know the people, the lay of the land, the climate, the flora and fauna. Some of my fiction is in the voice of children of the Depression years. I know those times; I know the children and their parents.
As a genealogist, I discovered that family histories hold a treasure trove of stories. In 1951, my mother, a cafe cook, served supper to Henry Fonda and the stage cast of Mr. Roberts, stranded in town during a snowstorm. That event became a story called The Prince Dined At The Palace. My book, Swinging Sisters, is based on family history. First published as an article in Catholic Digest, Reminisce and the Tampa Tribune, the book tells the story of four sisters, members of an all-girl band in the 1930s.
With only scant information from two obituaries, I fictionalized an unusual family event into a twice-published story, Prairie Fire. It links my maternal great-grandfather’s death in 1909 with that of his young daughter’s death seventeen years earlier. Both were struck and killed by lightning. Other family anecdotes have appeared in Family Tree magazine and in anthologies compiled by the publishers of Reminisce magazine. My interest in antiques and collectibles led to dozens of articles in Antique Shoppe newspaper.
Conversations with friends or strangers often yield story ideas. Remarks about my recognizable given name provided anecdotes for The Fame Of The Name. A writer's comment about writers not being paid for their work prompted me to publish A Penny For Your Prose. A friend told me about her adoption in 1917 after being sent to Minnesota on the Orphan Train. I fictionalized her experience in The End Game, published in Thema, and a nonfiction article, Riding The Rails West, published online.
Being blessed with grandchildren gives me material for stories. One granddaughter is the subject of an essay to be published this year in Gifts II, an anthology about people with Down syndrome.
If you find yourself short of ideas, look in writer’s magazines, where specific material is solicited by journals, contests, and anthologies. Writer’s Journal has contests for which the opening line of a story is given. Thema sets a specific premise for each issue, and The First Line prompts writers with a first line.
Familiarize yourself with local and regional periodicals and the type of material they use. Many newspapers have regular columns featuring local writers; others solicit material on specific subjects, holidays, or anniversaries of historical events. Every community has a host of stories waiting to be told. Writers need only scan the paper or watch the local television news for ideas about interesting places or people.
Read, read, read. Reading generates ideas, ideas generate writing. A word, a phrase, a picture can stoke the fires. A haunting old photograph of a little immigrant girl at Ellis Island, combined with a Thema premise, led me to write and publish In Mama's Footsteps.
Grab a notebook and pen and take a walk. Study your surroundings, smell the environment, chat with people, listen to accents and speech patterns, watch children playing, hang around a bus station, a Senior center, or teenagers at a mall.
Ideas are everywhere. You need only pluck them off the ether.