OH, THE PLACES I'VE BEEN

 <Originally Published October, 2011>

 

Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You’re off to Great Places!

You’re off and away!

 

So begins the motivational book Oh, The Places You’ll Go by the esteemed Dr. Seuss. The book was first published in 1990, years after my own graduation from high school, but if someone had given it to me, I would have scoffed. Why would anyone want to go explore that big scary world when everything I wanted/needed was right here in my small Ohio town? I planned to live in the same area–possibly the same house–where I had grown up and raise a whole passel of children who would wear the same unflattering Orange and Black school colors and then they’d grow up and have babies of their own and live right next door to me. In a word, I was wanderlust-less. So even if Oh, The Places You’ll Go had been available, its encouragement to go off and see the world would have been wasted on me. 

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.

TIMES CHANGE...or do they?

People I know know I love books. So people give me books all the time. One time many years ago I was gifted a box of old books. I mean REALLY old books! I was afraid to touch them. Arranged on my bookshelf they looked very "Authentic English Country House Formal Library," a setting Georgette Heyer (and other mystery writer of the early 1900s) used to stage murders.

As I reorganized my office to start the new year, I took inventory of the titles. Lo and behold, this gem popped up.