I was on a writer retreat with my bestie, Liz Flaherty a couple of weeks ago. It was fabulous. We wrote, we drank wine, we ate chocolate, we talked, we processed her book and mine. Our retreats are always as Liz puts it,
“… harbors, as in they are places of refuge and safety, places for gathering, resting, and repairing. They are narrow and small and contained and when we are finished in them, we are ready and happy to return to the open sea of our everyday lives, both our writing ones and our real ones.”
Isn’t that gorgeous? And so very true.
We talked about the little pieces of ideas that wander through our writer minds—snippets of conversations, words, things we notice that perhaps no one else notices. We share ideas about settings, even as minute as the furnishings in a specific house in a setting. That got me thinking about where my random ideas rest in my imagination—on a chintz chair, I think. Faded old flowered fabric on a huge overstuffed chair sitting in a sunny spot under the eaves. Maybe there’s an ottoman, but it doesn’t have to match because honestly, my decorating style, like my writing style, is as random as my ideas. So why would I imagine something that matches?
Everyone has word pictures in their minds—and often it takes just seeing a pair of fancy cowboy boots in a store in West Yellowstone, Montana, or a rusty pump on a ranch in Virginia City for a story to start to happen.
The what-ifs are the things that writers and readers store away in the chintz chairs in their imaginations, and they are as myriad and varied as readers and writers themselves.
So, here’s a list of just a few of the random pieces of ideas, thoughts, and word pictures from my chintz chair:
- She exuded grace and intelligence
- A streaky sunset
- A child mute and blinking in terror
- He let go of my hand and suddenly I was untethered and adrift in my own thoughts.
- Rumpled (Isn’t that a great word?)
- A train stops at a small snow-covered station
- What if I look in the mirror and someone else stares back.
- He crooked his finger in a come-hither gesture (Okay, I’ve used that one in more than one book, but it’s still on the table because it’s such a wonderfully sexy word picture.)
- Earthy and raw
- Coffee that tasted like morning . . . or was it the other way around?
Doesn’t that cozy chintz chair up there make you want to curl up and read or nap? Share a way that you find the cozy and comfy when you need it. There’s an e-book copy of Forever Cowboy waiting for one lucky commenter.
Until next time…
