Where Does It Start?

When I pick up my copy of Pen and Keyboard’s “Celebrating the Seasons”, I marvel at the variety of views on life and the human condition in the poems and stories. Where do these ideas originate?

To me, the mind is a field of dandelions as it disperses multiple seeds. Each fluffy parachute is looking for a spot to land and produce a new source of joy. Grab at one of those thoughts and plant in your mind or scribble it in a notebook. Is it that lost soul from America you meet on a train ride in Australia? The odd couple seated on a bench in New York’s Union Square Park? Or the friend who sold all his art and worldly possessions to travel to India’s poorest regions to help?

Plant that small encounter in your mind and then let your imagination feed it. There may be other side shoots and you do some pruning till you have the strong central bloom of a story.

Curiosity improves your story after a thought seed is caught. My story, “50 Candles”, in the anthology started with a remembrance of a friend whose life has been devoted to helping displaced people in Asia. Since I have not been fortunate enough to visit there yet, I found a new world while researching that area.

So let your mind wander. Grab at words that float to you, unusual sights and strong smells and let your imagination run wild.

B.S. Adamsons
                                               Pen & Keyboard Writers