How Do I Get Here From There

This Is How My Brain Works. Sorry. (Day 72)

My brain generating story ideas.

The other day, a reader asked me how I come up with a story every single day. Not a GOOD story mind you, just a story. That’s the old “Where do you get your ideas” question that writers are asked all the time.

I don’t think much about it, to be honest. I doubt many working writers do.

But I figured for the sake of the question, I’d give you all a peek inside how my brain works when thinking about stories. Not sure if you’re ready to see such a mess, but here we go.

1. I start with an idea like something someone said. A situation I found myself in. Or, in today’s example, a history post on Facebook that mentioned a fellow by the name of Emil Olsen, a stunt man who died in a sky diving accident in 1915 at the Brockton Fair in Massachusetts.

2. There wasn’t much info about Emil so I looked him up through a New England Aviation History website. That was sort of interesting. It was a hot air balloon and his stunt was to wear four parachutes. He deployed the first three and then, well, the fourth one didn’t deploy. The end of Emil.

3. That was curious (not to mention ill-thought out on Emil’s part) but not really story worthy, but there WAS a link on the story that took me to a general history story about the Brockton Fair, one of the oldest in the country. One of the pictures there from 1938 was taken by a photographer I was familiar with, a Boston Herald traveler photographer by the name of Leslie Jones.

4. Leslie is pretty amazing. During the 1930s and 1940s, he travelled all over New England taking pictures of fair, mountains, farms, you name it. The digital archive at Boston Public Library has an enormous amount of his work available to the public. So I went over there to see what else he shot at the Brockton Fair.

5. Holy cow! One of the first shots I found was the incredible picture of the car jumping through flames that I posted above! This is 1938 remember. That’s really interesting, I thought, what’s that about?

6. So there we are. Tomorrow, I’ll post a little story about Lucky Teter and His Hell Drivers, as they were billed. Why? Because dang, that guy was nuts and just look at that photo!

Now, I’m not saying my brain always works like this, but I’m at that stage in my career where I no longer have to worry about writing about things that don’t interest me. Lucky Teter interests me! And I hope he interests you as well!

If not, well, my suggestion is to wait 24 hours and see what other rabbit hole I fell into. Or, shoot me some ideas. I’m always open to suggestions. Intrigue me!

Till tomorrow and Lucky, I leave you with this -