Everybody Has An Idea

Every ? is an idea! 

It seems like everyone has a great idea for a book. Don’t you run into that? Almost always when I tell someone I write, they say they have a cool idea. Actually, I truly do enjoy hearing people’s ideas and I also tell them that I may use those ideas someday, if they don't mind. And most of the time they love that someone would want to use something that they had thought up in their own minds. I have compiled tons of notes for stories to come.

The other night, while sitting in my kitchen at the dining room table, I’m mumbling out loud about how I need a subject for my blog. I'm blank at the moment. My husband who is preparing dinner, or rather sipping wine more than cooking, begins telling me about how he has this idea for the next NYT best selling romance novel. Not wanting to burst his bubble, I said, “Okay, tell me about your story idea.”

Well, my husband's a golfing addict (and he's good natured and won't mind me poking fun at him), and one of our sons works for an exclusive golf course in town (now this might embarrass him because he's still at that embarassable age), so you can guess what the Hero and Heroine do, in his mind.

"The Hero is the assistant pro," my husband went on, "and the Heroine is the exec assistant to one of the members. The head pro is the villain getting inside information regarding Wall Street and Washington and turning it over to foreign spies who are also somehow involved with Donald Trump!" And he goes on and on, but when I started asking him pertinent questions about goals, motivation, and conflict for the characters, he said, “I don’t care about the why stuff! You have to figure that out.”

"Exactly!" I said loudly.

Sometimes the ideas
 just don't come!
But all you have to do is look
around or announce you need
a subject and boom,
you've got the germ!

Now if I tried, I could probably make something out of this, but right now I eat, live, and breathe golf stuff all around me, so I'll think about that one. Perhaps I’ll take a look at a later date. At the moment I write to escape and love creating imaginary worlds rather than my own.  

I’d love to hear ideas from anyone who is willing to share. Let me know if you are willing to allow me to use them, or not. All I need is a germ of an idea and my mind can go running wild and that's how it begins. In fact, my brain is going crazy over a spark that someone shared with me this weekend. We'll see where that one leads... 

Got any ideas?
Come on, share :-)

Happy Idea Listening.......and gathering.....

Wendy Treitel