Greetings and salutations! First off thank you for finding this article and (hopefully) reading it and if you like my voice I would be honored to have you start following me in my quest for the perfect career mix of fishing and writing. After all I really do have a great voice, it’s like a velvet blanket, just go with it. A big shout out to my Four followers, thank you! Although technically it’s three as I’m the fourth but I like me so I’ll take it.
I’m continuously amazed at the multiple manners of which inspiration can strike. Allow me to back track just a bit. My current story is based around an urban legend here in Missouri and although I mapped out the general idea of the story long ago, I’d really done nothing with developing the characters. Trying something new to me, I stopped planning and just starting writing and am letting the characters “speak” to me. It’s working great so far and I’m gaining a wealth of sub plots I hadn’t planned on, not to mention, I absolutely love it when a character surprises me. I’m writing along and suddenly the character says something in my head and I’m like, (gasp) “Oh no she didn’t!” (finger snaps). Anyway the problem I was running into is I’m getting too far away from the main story line and wasn’t sure how to get back to it.
I pressed on for two weeks while still stressing out over how I was going to do this I was suddenly awoken in the middle of the night by an intruder at my home! Actually it was a teenage boy I busted on my back porch at 2 am who accidentally woke me instead of my teenage daughter. Short story version is I had a few words for him, showed him my baseball bat, and he agreed never to do this again. Later that day I’m thinking about the event for the umpteenth time and suddenly the solution to my story problem is RIGHT THERE!
Fortunately I was able to jump immediately onto my laptop and within an hour I did over a thousand words of this fresh idea thanks to the punk! Before you ask, no, I’m not thanking him for inadvertently inspiring the fix to my story nor will I be. To his credit however he has expressed, through texting my daughter, his wish to come apologize sometime. We shall see ( I say in my deepest velvety voice).
Has inspiration struck you at an odd time or place? Let me hear about it in the comments below. Till next time!
Jason A. Meuschke 