Need a Story Idea?

I must say, it’s been a very interesting day. Among the many pieces of totally ignorable emails and several valuable messages were three items in French, one sales pitch for a wrinkle cream that would make me look young again, one demand for action, one with the subject line that read “Winner” and one notice of eviction.

French? I can’t read the language, can’t speak it, never, been to France, have never visited any links from that country and know only one person who lives in Paris. (These missives arrive at the rate of three or four a week and, naturally, I direct them to my spam folder where I eventually have to delete them.)

I have to admit, the wrinkle cream sounds interesting but not enticing enough to lure me to the website, which I know will try to give me a “free” sample that will ding my credit card for shipping and handling then likely (if I don’t read the fine print and probably even if I do) will start charging the same card for unwanted shipments for months to come. Besides that, I earned my face and don’t want it to revert to years gone by. It just wouldn’t fit my body. (Of course, were I to follow through and order the “free” sample, my email address would probably be sold to some company that promised to make my body look younger as well.)

The demand for action message (in 18 point type) made me chuckle. The sender insisted that I respond to this second request (There was no first.) and provide information so I could claim my Three Million Six Hundred Thousand British Pounds inheritance. (Note the upper case.) I didn’t read the entire message.

Of course, that inheritance amount made me only partially wealthy because the amount of money coming to me as the result of a promotion held in 2014 was equally tantalizing: €2,000,000.00 Euros ( in US Dollars $2,477,700.69 USD ). Nice of them to put the value in amounts I can understand.

Just think, with all that money, why would I need to write?

And then there was the Notice of Eviction. How fascinating. Of course, it wasn’t fascinating enough for me to open the attachment. (Not to worry; I’m current on my mortgage payment and there’s no chance the city is going to take my place by eminent domain.)

What does this have to do with the Writer Side of Me? Nothing really, except I know that at least one and maybe more of these will eventually become part of a novel or at the very least, the premise of an interesting short story.

And when people ask me (as they often do) where I get my ideas, I no longer have to tell them about the people living inside my head and watch the glazed look of  “she’s crazy” take over their faces. I just tell them, “Oh, someone emailed the idea to me.”

Where do your ideas come from?

What's your novel about?

One of the toughest tasks for a writer comes after the last period on the last page.

It's summarizing all that hard work, all those words, all those characters and plot developments into a comprehensive summary for submission to an agent or a publisher or to use as detail information on their ebook sales page.

I found this very interesting and helpful blog post from another author's site. Mike Wells has done a good job of identifying the points to include by using The Wizard of Oz as his example.

If you have a kindle, you can download this and the entire related archive for free.

Why I'm not blogging every day

I took the advice and now I'm not so sure I should have.

I read the books and articles about blogging and learned that everyone placed as one of the top ten "must-do" rules for bloggers is writing every day. Some gurus say it in bold face, upper case, extra-large type with one or more exclamation points.

BLOG EVERY DAY!!!

Maybe that works for people who are using their blogs as a source of revenue, or groups that are writing about current events; or folks who are using their blog as a journal; it doesn't necessarily work for the rest of us.

I don't run out of topics for this blog; I don't run out of time to write.

I just think that unless a blogger has a very large number of followers that read posts daily, the better approach is to write good, solid, focused content that's available for more than a day.

Good, solid, focused content can get buried quickly. I just think it's a better idea to let a good post attract attention before speeding off to something new.

I know. I'm flying in the face of the blogger's box but I'm going to take a stand by choosing to wait a day or two or three between postings. Meanwhile, I'll be reading other blogs, working on my next novel, writing my regular poker column, checking in with my facebook friends, visiting friends and relatives, reading email, and enjoying the summer.