My Best Ideas

What do you think of when you sit down to write a post? Do you think of things you did today or yesterday? Or do you remember things you did a long time ago, maybe even when you were a kid.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Fact or fiction which do you prefer writing about?

Facts and actual events are easy for me to write about. As most of you know my stories mostly come from my life, anything from a trip to Wally-world with my wife Cindy, not so successfully capturing gophers, the time we drove across country with the kids, even when we left New Mexico and ended up sleeping in a U haul with our little dog Dixie, or the time I lost my little Brother accidentally on purpose, it was Not like the movies, because I knew where he was all along. This may be a lot of examples, but my point is that real life is completely full of stories that you can share.

If you get stumped on what to write, just reminisce on things you have done in the past, or even what you saw the last time you went to the store.

Fiction is a lot of fun too, I haven't written a lot of fiction but what I have written takes a lot of imagination. The Words for Wednesday challenge gives us a list of words. The first one I participated in was especially easy for me. The words reminded me of an incident my Dad had told me about that happened to him. I simply began writing a story based on his experiences, and all the words fell into place. That was one of the easiest fiction stories I have ever written.

Todd and Tammy was really a lot of fun for me. A lot of the instances were based on areas familiar to me, and even some bad experiences I have witnessed, or that people close to me went through. No one I know was actually ever held hostage, or anything like that, but letting your imagination run wild based on facts can and will turn into a good story.

I'm not claiming to be an expert but my best ideas come from things I have actually seen and done, and other times those ideas come when I let my imagination run wild.

Descriptions in your story can be based on actual things you have seen. For example a piece from A Burst of Light I described Tammy seeing her baby for the first time like this. "Tammy looked down at the face of her newborn angel, she was the most beautiful thing Tammy had ever seen, her reddish looking skin had a sericeous quality, covered in little downy hairs that Tammy thought strange but cute at the same time." I have two sons from my first marriage that I don't talk about here, their choice not mine, but I was actually in the room when my youngest son was born.

This description is how I remember feeling and how he looked first time I saw him. Even though I didn't know what sericeous meant until the morning I wrote that post, I do remember him being covered in that downy hair, and how good looking a baby he was. Just goes to show we are never too old to learn something new and apply it to things we have experienced.

The best thing you can do is to read your story out loud to yourself before you post it, I have had to reword a lot of sentences after reading a post out loud, add a word, or remove extra words that don't sound the same out loud as they do in my head.

Rereading my posts and editing them before I publish them hopefully makes them more understandable to you.

How many times have you written something that you think is going to grab your readers attention and then nobody comments on it? I think this is common with a lot of us.

Have you ever written something in jest or as a satire? But rather than coming off as such it was taken seriously. Or have you written something you are serious about and it is taken lightly? What I'm getting at is sometimes your best idea comes off completely different to your readers than what you intended.

I don't have an answer for this other than to just keep putting yourself out there because you are the reason your readers keep coming back. Fact, Fiction, Satire, Poetry, or whatever you enjoy just keep doing it.

We sometimes need to step away for a break, I know I did due to my health for an extended time, and that's OK. But all of the kindness and laughter my friends here have shared with me over the years brought me back into the fold.

Thank you to all who have stuck with me for so long, and Thank you to all of my new friends for giving me a chance.

One last thing; As an example of things to write about, I really didn't have an idea for a post when I started writing this one, but I ended up writing a post about writing posts. Did you notice that?