Where Do They Come From?

Jessie, battling frozen toes and vitamin D deficiencies somewhere north of most everywhere

I needed an idea for this blog post. I’ve been hard at work on recent projects and I felt like the source of inspiration had run dry. Which caused me to ask myself that question writers are so often asked by others: “So where do you get your ideas?”. I had no clue how to answer the question so I resorted to another strategy: Google.

Clicking open the search engine, I looked at the Google logo and felt a thud of disappointment that there was no special artwork honoring the day. Which made me ask why it wasn’t a special day. I googled some more and came across this thought-provoking website where I learned at the time of this writing it was simultaneously National Cold Cuts Day, National Mulled Wine Day and National What if Dogs and Cats Had Opposable Thumbs Day. Suddenly, I was having some ideas. Not for a blog post but for a story involving household pets who had developed opposable thumbs in order to use cork screws and to carefully close the plastic zip bags containing smoked ham in order to preserve freshness.

Which, of course, made me wonder if household pets care a jot about cold cut freshness. It also got me wondering which other days might be out there. I clicked on all sorts of dates, most of them significant to me as either birth dates of loved ones or days like anniversaries. I was surprised to find how often the dates seemed to fit with the person born on them. For example, one of my sisters was born on National Maple Syrup Day. She taps her own trees and boils down sap most winters. One of my nieces, an artist in multiple disciplines, was born on National Day to Create. I was surprised to discover I married an immigrant on International Kissing Day.

Not surprisingly, another idea popped into my head, a sort of a science fiction/fantasy tale involving a higher consciousness set on scheduling and sorting out a cosmic calendar with births, deaths and events of note lining up with silly made up holidays. I began pondering a dumbed down horoscope and what all that might mean.

Before long I was thinking about how an international syrup maker and his artistic sidekick could recruit the world’s  pets with opposable thumbs in time to help fight an alien invasion on World UFO Day. Which led me back to the original question. How do writers get their ideas? I guess it comes down to seeing combinations and possibilities in the every day, the inane, the coincidental. It comes from seeking connections no matter how insignificant or dismissible. It comes from slipping down the rabbit hole and having fun while you are there.

Readers, do the important dates in your life give you any ideas?