FM Merry-Go-Round Tour: Where Did I Get My Latest Idea

Ideas are like grass and I'm the cow. No, really!

There are so many things around me that cry out to be turned into stories that I never have only one project in process. I take one from here, another from over there and, oh look! There's a great one further that way! I call it my writer's ADD. My husband calls them my "Ooo! Shiny!" moments. My ideas come from paintings, people, phrases or quotes, pictures and places. Though I am rather like a bird that flits from one sparkly object to another, they tend to stick with me for a while once I do have it in my head.

Back to the cow analogy. Once I have an idea it can sit in my head for a long while before I commit it to paper. Sometimes I start writing right away and then put it aside because I'm not done thinking it through. Like a good cow, I like to chew my cud. One story I've been working on for over eight years. It's been great writing and it's kind of like my baby blanket of writing...I work on it when everything else has me too work up to think about. That particular story idea came to me out of nowhere...infact it's been so long I can't remember if it was a dream or something else entirely.

Josephine By Joseph Chinard

My latest idea came to me while I was visiting England. I was at a museum and there was a beautiful bust of Josephine de Beauharnais (Napoleon's first wife) that I stared at for a solid fifteen minutes. The picture to the right is the bust in question. Her face looked so kind but regal and somehow sad and my mind began to wonder what it would be like to meet her as a woman of today and she, a woman of the past. All of the Napoleonic era interests me from a costumer's standpoint but the people of Napoleon's court must have been equally as fascinating. That's the wonderful thing about writing. The best thing, I think. You can go anywhere and meet anyone you like because they're all there at the tip of your pen....or cursor as the case may be.



 Today’s post was inspired by the topic “Where I got my latest idea” — the opening question in the inaugural cycle of the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour — an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. The next post in the tour will be on the 1st, by Alex Fayle. Be sure to check it out.


If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out where they got their latest ideas, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. You can find links to all of the posts on the tour by checking out the group site. Read and enjoy!