Family and Fun

My family members who are followers of this blog haven’t commented lately, but I know they are busy getting ready to come to Idaho for their annual family vacation at McCall, and that includes getting little children ready for the trip. One of them has written in his own blog that McCall is the best place on earth to be. Maybe so, for him, but I’d opt for Sun Valley, except it might have changed too much since I was last there. According to novelist Ridley Pearson, who has a “killer” series going with the settings in the Sun Valley area, the place doesn’t seem as good as it did on my visits there. Pearson lives in nearby Hailey part of the time, and surely knows what Sun Valley is currently like. I used to take my German Club from school to the resort in the winter so that they could ski and ice skate with German spoken around them, for instructors, or whoever they were, came from German-speaking countries.

Did you know German is spoken by more countries in Europe, or parts of countries, as a native language, than any other language? Five countries or parts, I think: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein. Well, when this first got my attention, Germany was divided into two countries. So, East Germany would have been number five.

Now a note for would-be writers, or beginners. A writer, with the imagination he was born with, should never wonder what in the world to write about. Rather, the problem, if any, should be, deciding which of his many ideas to choose. But if you are not blessedor cursedwith a deluge of ideas, playing mental games can help sometimes. Here’s one to try. Imagine you’re in a modern fairy tale in a good-sized town that you know well. Select five businesses in the town that you imagine you own. Which ones would they be? Since I don’t know your choices, let me list mine (remember, it’s a fairy tale): the Lincoln car dealership, Barnes and Noble super store, Ennis Fine Furniture store, Macy’s department store, and Elmer’s restaurant on Capitol Boulevard. Now, think about each one, not for long, just a moment or two, and one of them may inspire you as the locale for a story, or even a plot. Mix them up too. For example, a man could pick up his new Lincoln, and on his way to lunch with his wife at Elmer’s, stop in at Barnes and Noble for a certain book he wants, waits for his wife to find a DVD she wants, begins to get irritated, and the last straw of this scenario is that after lunch, she wants to go to Ennis to look at the latest furniture, he refuses, then she has to stop at Macy’s, for all her underwear is wearing under, oops, I mean wearing out. He guns it away from Macy’s and a policeman gives him a ticket. See? You’re on your way. Well, this might work if you write crime fiction, but perhaps you’re more poetically inclined. What can we do with these five businesses in what is called a literary or mainstream story? Let’s try.

The young widow Clarice picks up her new Continental, drives slowly away, mourning the death of her husband who wrecked their old Lincoln when he killed himselfaccidentally, by the wayand goes to Macy’s to choose a little black dress for the funeral. She sees her old professor of library science there, and he tries to console her and mentions a certain book she should read. She thanks him and goes straight to Barnes and Noble and buys the book, can hardly wait to get into it, which she will do at Elmer’s, while she waits for her German pancake which will take some time to cook. She reads in the book, if the deceased had a room of his own, an office, or a bedroom, the survivor needs to rearrange the furniture and perhaps replace it with other furniture. Not to forget the one lost, but just to relieve the ache of losing him. She drives to Ennis Fine Furniture and chooses new items for his former office, and for the master bedroom itself. She adds a cheerful, floral chaise longue, for one thing. Because she owns the store, the furniture is delivered the same day. The writer supplies the emotions involved, the dialogue, the vocabulary, and exposition that make this story mainstream. Try it. You can do it.

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