Writing and Unexpected Sources of Assistance

That's my youngest daughter in the picture (isn't she a cutie?) Children do not qualify as "unexpected sources" for writing. In fact, children often become the 'walking wealth of inspiration' to writers. Inadvertently my youngest (of six) did have a role in the first book I wrote and published.

I'd been in the writing 'game' for about five years. A mentor took me under his wing and told me to "write what I know". Heck, I want to write fiction because I DON'T know what will happen. That's the beauty of fiction. Often it's characters write the story for or with you. I told my mentor, Rik Feeney, "What do I know? I only have five children and my wife is pregnant ... Oh!"

I got it. I wrote a book on fatherhood. In fact, I wrote it spanning the time period pre-birth through eighteen months. This time frame coincided with my daughter Veronica's life to that point. Basically, I wrote down everything I did to bond with her. It is a simple book, but one new fathers can use as a reference book if nothing else.

The point for this hub is that my wife's pregnancy was a shock (she was forty-five when Roni was born) and Veronica was our last child - for the third time. This was a VERY unexpected source of assistance for my writing career. I'm proud of Fatherhood 101, even if fiction dominates my writing passion.

One day in summer 2008, my Rogues Gallery Writer cohort Tracy McDurmon and I were talking about art and poetry. I mentioned I had written oodles of poetry and I had always wanted to get my poems 'painted' and put into a book. A project was born that day. I turned over one hundred fifty to two hundred poems to Tracy and she picked those that really moved her and she interpreted them through acrylic paints.

The results of the book, Loves Lost and Found have exceeded our expectations. The book opened doors to her in the art world. Her paintings are going to be featured in a grand opening of an elite household furnishings store in the St. Augustine area next week. I was amazed at how she took my words and transformed them into art. VERY unexpected source of assistance for my writing career.

Today I tweeted that I needed a subject on which to write. I was drawing blanks and wanted something fresh. My Tweets post to FaceBook and like everyone else, I have a lot of high school friends and acquaintances there. One acquaintance (Ron - we were not close friends in school) sent me a plot line he'd been thinking of for years. He said he did not really write fiction, but if I could use the idea to go for it.

Amazing to me, I noted how his suggestion could easily fit into a novel I'm writing that had stalled. The stall happened because of a lack of a solid conflict. I have excellent characters, an excellent overarching storyline, but I needed more conflict. There it was, on a FaceBook email, right before my eyes.

I won't get around to using it until Nanowrimo is over. I'm currently writing a book (42,000 words as of this hub), and I am a bit behind in my word count. Nanowrimo requires 50,000 words to complete (and win!) the contest. I'm behind in my count by about 3000 words. But my high school friendly assistance came very unexpected.

I put the plea out there as much to jump start myself as to get assistance from anyone else. People come up to me and give me plot lines all the time. Most are ridiculous or boring or outside my writing tastes. Ron's suggestion was a bulls-eye.

One of the cool things about writing every day and being consistent AND insistent about it is that these unexpected assists happen often. In October I was at an all day workshop put on by Margie Lawson. She is incredible. My fourteen-year-old daughter Ivy was with me. Margie asked for a manuscript (first page only) to read aloud to the 102 writers in the workshop. Margie wanted to look for exposition on the first page.

My daughter (to my absolute shock and amazement) raised her hand. Margie took the first page of Ivy's novel and began reading. Margie stopped after two paragraphs and stated, "This is really good." She read a couple more paragraphs stopped again and said, "I don't want to put this down!" Fortunately, my daughter opened her book with nothing but dialog and action (I've taught her well, eh?). Margie read to the end of the page. Then she gave my daughter a certificate for a transcript of one of her complete week-long editing workshops. Three hundred pages of transcripts. Even more valuable than that, Margie and I are on a first name basis. She has even quoted me on one her websites. Unexpected? Can you say "from outer space" unexpected?

There is no way to predict where your next assist may come from. The only true prediction that can be made is that if you do not step out and write, submit, post, etc, the assists will be few and far between if they exist at all. Realize your assists are a product of what you put into your writing. They are opportunities that come knocking and you must be in a position to answer, which means you need to be open to circumstance. Seize the day!