Quote of the Day: I woke up this morning with this song running through my mind. Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood? Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood? The people that you meet each day. from Sesame Street
I was in on a great conversation last Saturday at that wedding reception. (No eavesdropping needed, I was legitimately there.) A woman was talking about her mother-in-law (MIL), how well they get along, actually, yet, she has some quirky habits. As they were planning her wedding, the MIL suggested they have fresh-cut flowers, from the garden.
DIL: But, we don’t have much for flowers in our garden this year.
MIL: Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’ll just go night picking around the neighborhood.
You never know where you’ll gather up good dialogue, hear a great story, collect bits of humor that you can later use in your written work. As you go about your daily life, doing mundane things like buying meat, you might strike up a conversation with the butcher and discover new ingredients to add to your lasagna. Now, I’ve gotta be a little careful here. If you’re a mystery writer, you might already have some dark thoughts on that statement. To clarify, I was buying both ground beef and chicken & swiss brats (they really are great), and he suggested I put some of the brat meat in the lasagna. So, I’m going to try it on my guests for Thursday night. (Stop thinking like Agatha Christie!)
Go. Create. Inspire! (and do a bit of clandestine collecting, you might gather a bouquet of ideas)
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time/place/person who gave you great ideas for your project.
A person might want to be careful collecting tidbits – you never know what you’ll learn about your neighbors! (insert evil laugh here)
Funny!
I used to do this when I was young, take flowers off neighbor’s lawns & make art projects out of them. Hehehe
You never know what could be buried in those backyards, right Lisa?
The neighbors like to share their beauty, right Jade?
Mary, now I’m humming the same tune! 🙂 You really are an ace at finding the gems in conversations with people. Oh, and not to mention initiating such conversations. That in itself is a skill, and something not everyone can do. So you can congratulate yourself on that! 🙂
Let us know how dinner goes!
That’s why I watch so many movies – I hear things that give me ideas for my own writing.
A friend was organizing a festival of poems inspired by film noir, and called it Poetry Noir, and I suddenly thought of doing “Film Noir Mosaics” and enjoyed making black, silver, white and gray work, which I hadn’t done before.
Arsenic and old lace, sorry I couldn’t resist. You know having a conversation is food for thought and the added benefit is that it makes the person you are talking with happier in their job and in turn I find I am happier talking with those people we encounter casually. It is amazing what can inspire people in their art. I made an art piece the other day and wrote a short imaginative blog post to go with it. I found that fun.
that’s a funny story!
I don’t have a consistent source of inspiration. It just kind of comes or doesn’t. The last great aha moment I had was two nights ago when I had this dream which solved a plot problem I’ve been working on. Only a writer thinks about plot points in their sleep.
HA! So funny, my chocolate loving pal. I listen in on conversations all the time.
Hmmm, the butcher and the lasagna. Hmmm, mwa ha ha ha.
My journaling prompt is about you. You have given me so many ideas with the prompts it’s almost illegal! 😉