Thursday, August 26, 2021

DEAR INCREDIBLE STORY IDEA...I will find you and I will write you!

      

One of the top questions I get asked by readers is, “Where do you get your inspiration for stories?”  The easier question to answer is, “Where DON’T I find inspiration?”  Everything I see, I wonder what the story behind it is, like these shoes in the image. It’s all about asking a few questions and then making up the answers.  
     Say you’re walking down the street of your small Midwestern town and notice that the large clock atop the town hall has stopped working. You ask yourself when and why did it stop?  A writer might (and one did) wonder if it had been struck by lightning. Hence the time it had been struck was preserved for future generations to cogitate about. That begs the question, if someone were to travel back in time and needed to harness a huge amount of energy, they would know what time the clock was struck and arrange to be there when the lightning struck. Hence with a few questions and a little imagination, you could have written Back to the Future. And you would have made a little bit of money doing so, too.

Thursday, August 12, 2021

VERY SUPERSTITIOUS...


Have you checked the calendar today? Yup. It’s Friday the 13th. Does that scare you?

According to my sources (the Internet), thirteen is an unlucky number. Historically it has something to do with the number of people seated at the dinner table. Why? Let’s see…how many were at The Last Supper? Thirteen. And we all know how that turned out. How many, according to the Norse myth, were at the table before Loki arrived uninvited and then some really bad things happened, like, people died? Twelve, plus Loki equals thirteen. The code of Hammurabi skips right over a 13th Law. There must be something to this...

Twelve is considered a “perfect” number (twelve months in a year, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve hours in half of a day.) It then follows that the number thirteen must be equally UN-perfect, right? Or so the superstitious minded say. Peoples’ fear of the number thirteen, labeled triskaidekaphobia (that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?) is evident through the centuries. Even today you might hop on an elevator in a high-rise and notice there is no 13th floor.