When Ideas Won't Come

by June Shaw

What do you do if you're an author, and ideas won't come?

For about the two thousandth time, I am about to find out.

Normally when I don't know what words to type on the page it's because I'm at a place in the plot of a novel where something important and unexpected needs to happen. When that occurs, I often sit back, look at what I'd written thus far, and consider what twist might pull the reader along so that he or she won't close the book.

That's not what's happening now. Right now I'm setting my fingers on my laptop keys and creating one word after another, but I need to admit -- I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

I'll blame it on others. Twice within the past week I needed to create blogs for other people (of course I could have done them sooner, but -- I digress.) Possibly I could start thinking of something clever to write in our group blog here like so many of the other authors do. I could set lots of attractive pictures in my posts (if I could figure out how to do that.)

I write a quarterly column for our area's Chamber of Commerce. The same thing happens there. Ideas come at the last minute. I'm not sure who I'll write about until the editor shoots me a reminder that my column is due in a few days.

I don't put off writing on a work-in-progress almost every day. My routine is set: rise whenever I wake up, read my Daily Word and say quick prayers, grab my coffee and get to the computer. Of course my fiction might increase faster if the Internet wasn't connected.


So what do you keep writing about? And how do you do it on time? I'd love to know how others keep up with all of the things they're trying to write.

http//www.juneshaw.com

Writing Books around Seasons

By June Shaw

Have you written any mysteries around a holiday or season?

Have you picked up any books to read because they were centered around a holiday theme or a season?

Lots of books seem to come out each year centered around Christmas. Quite a few take place around Thanksgiving.

I've seen a number of books centered around Fourth of July. But what about Flag Day? Can you come up with an idea about that?

Mother's Day? Any story has to be filled with conflict. What conflicts could arise during that supposedly happy weekend?

Winter has attracted many mysteries with its imagines of things dying. So has snow which covers bodies. But what about spring? New birth? And a death or two?

Graduation--commencement--the beginning. I used that happy time to center my first mystery, Relative Danger.

Taking a cruise--yes--what pleasure--unless people you know start dying. And then there's your class reunion--what fun--unless one of your good friends is a killer--and you need to find out. I had so much fun with that concept with my newest mystery, Deadly Reunion.

While you're coming up with a place for your story to take place, maybe you'll want to give more thought to the occasion or season in which you set your story. Doing so can sometimes give it extra dimension.

WHERE DO IDEAS FOR BOOKS COME FROM?

by June Shaw

Many readers want to know where novelists get their ideas.

Recently I enjoyed getting a new one. I was in the post office with only the two women working at the counter when the door opened and shut behind me.

"I need to mail a shoe," a guy said.

I turned around, big smile on my face. The nice-looking young man held a woman's attractive strappy black heel.

"Okay," I said, "I'm a novelist. You have got to tell me about this shoe."

He grinned and complied, and the women and I enjoyed his story. It seems he'd flown across the country to stand in a good friend's wedding. Afterward, when he was with others from the bridal party at the airport, one of the bridesmaids' suitcases was too heavy. A couple of the guys opened their bags and let her toss some of her things in. They'd returned her things. But he found one of her shoes had remained with him--so now he wanted a box to ship it in.

"Love that story," I said and gave him one of my business cards. "Thanks for giving me the idea for one of my next books. I normally write mysteries, but that one might have to be a romance."

He held up the shoe. "Kind of like Cinderella, huh?" he said, and I agreed.

Okay, so now none of you steal this story. It happened to me, and I'm going to use it in a novel.

I came up with the idea for my newest mystery, the newly released DEADLY REUNION, at my last class reunion. Wondering who my former classmates really were and whether I'd ever completely known good friends at all, I decided I'd write a novel about one. And then setting it on an Alaskan cruise--well, somebody had to do research. And as far as my main character's mishap, I once heard Bette Middler say she strutted across a stage in really high heels and fell and broke her ankle, so...

Now tell us all -- where do you get your ideas?

Where do you get your ideas?

by Bill Kirton

It’s the question we’re always asked and, sometimes, it’s very easy to answer. My first radio play was broadcast on the BBC many years ago but I still have a very clear recollection of how it came about. It didn’t have just the one source but two. It was only when they came together that the idea formed.

The play was called An Old Man and Some People. The main substance of it came from an incident which happened when we were at a friend’s for dinner. This was many years ago. I was young and, astonishingly, drinking and driving didn’t seem mutually exclusive. The friends lived in a new house on a fairly posh estate but one which still had houses being built on it. We’d eaten and drunk well and there was a knock at the door. It was a policeman asking whether the grey van outside belonged to any of us. It was mine.

The policeman was very polite. He just wanted me to park the van around the corner off the main road. Apparently, the night watchman on the building site had ‘reported’ it. God knows why. There were no parking restrictions or anything. In fact, he was just doing his job. But when the policeman left, I was angry. I was all for going out and telling the man what I thought of him. It didn’t help that our hosts said he was a nosy old bugger.

But the following day – sober, of course – I was ashamed of the way I’d felt. I was young, having a good time, eating great food and swallowing litres (probably gallons in those days come to think of it) of wine. He was old, alone, stuck in a hut on a building site. And I wanted to go and shout at him. I disgusted me.

Then, several months later, I was looking through some newspaper cuttings. I clip out things which seem out of the ordinary, absurd, sad or anything which makes them stand out. This one was in the tragic category. A man was accused of the manslaughter of his wife. She’d been terminally ill for a while and was always asking him to finish her off to stop the pain. He couldn’t do it. Then, one day, she fell and was just lying there, so he took a pillow and held it over her face. Then he phoned the police and told them he’d killed her. The irony was that he was acquitted because the autopsy showed that his wife was already dead before he held the pillow to her face.

That awful image of the poor man, after months of suffering, ‘suffocating’ his wife’s body had haunted me but I’d forgotten about it. But now, suddenly, by making it a part of my night watchman’s past, I had a play which wasn’t just a petty subjective record of my unreasonable anger and consequent shame, but something which worked at a different level. Its resonance was wider, its conclusions less facile and it might involve listeners at a deeper level.

As I said, it was the first play I had broadcast. I still think it was possibly the best I ever wrote, too.

(PS. I realise that this begs another question. What’s the morality of me using a true, tragic story to give substance to my writing? Not an easy one to answer.)