Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Sources for Story Lines

Story Lines

I'm back on story lines again. I think they are every bit as important as elegant writing. "You've heard the lipstick on the pig analogy." It would seem to me that if a writer is going to go to all the trouble to write they ought to have a good story to tell. I've already beaten the horse to death that good stories don't come to a writer as he/she strokes the jaw and thinks inwardly. No, great stories are swirling about in the great abyss and you can get your characters to tell them, via your muse. If you still have one that is...if she hasn't walked off in a huff and told you to "Get Bent."

Now there's still hope if your muse, to use the euphemism, is on hiatus. My wife is a nurse and she talks to patients and they tell her the most amazing things. When she comes back from working the weekends she is wound tighter than a bow string and I get a blow by blow of everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours. I don't know if it's a woman thing or if she's plagued by the "I can't forget" gene. My daughters have it. They used to come back from a movie and recite every scene and line. They must drive their husbands crazy. Anyway while we sit in bed and I'm waiting for her to wind down and become affectionate she goes on and on.

Anyway Linda came home this weekend and told the following story. An eighty-eight year old, spry old lady was recalling her girlhood.

"When I was eight a neighbor, who was about to deliver, asked my mother if she could borrow me for a month. She had three young children and nobody to help while she was in the post delivery mode. She offered me thirty dollars, to do the chores and watch her children and help with the infant. Iaccepted and went to work. Sometimes my sister came by to help and I told her I'd share some of the money to buy material so they could both have new dresses when school started. The delivery had complications and stretched the job out two additional weeks. I got the youngsters up and fed and even helped with the formula and nursing duties, not to mention the laundry and fixing the meals. When the time came to be paid the woman told me she didn't have the money to spare and offered me two-dozen eggs instead."

Now that's a great story. Long after those dresses and that thirty dollars would have been forgotten those two dozen eggs remained indelibly burned into this old lady's memory. When my mother was in the hospital her room mates told me many interesting things in a similar vein. I'm certain that anyone with "Writers Cramp," could go to the nursing home and come out with a raft of good material.

There is a tendency on the part of readers to attribute to a writers scribbling some measure of personal experience. There is nothing wrong with using personal experience but most of what I write is not something I have directly experienced. To be sure it is flavored by what I've done and my experience provides the litmus test on credibility but most of my ideas are dropped on the threshold of my imagination by passing spirits or muses. So if you enjoy my writing don't give me too much credit. If you hate it then be advised it isn't all my fault. After all I live in Wisconsin.