Where do you get your ideas?”
People ask me that all the time. Unfortunately, there’s no pat answer. Ideas for my stories come from many different sources. Sometimes a movie. Other times a newspaper or magazine article. Oftentimes a personal testimony from someone at church might ignite my muse. But frequently I get my ideas from personal experiences.
Take, for example, my novel Promise Me Forever (Barbour Publishing). I came up with the idea when my husband and I attended a wedding and the groom didn’t show up! No lie! That really happened! (See my previous blog post for details.)
The inception of my novel The Haven of Rest (Barbour Publishing) occurred when my mother told me about the old gas station in the small town where she’d grown up. She remarked about how sad it was that the filling station now stood abandoned, along with the building the once housed a Laundromat and my great Uncle Edwin’s second floor apartment. I knew of the filling station, and a nostalgic chord was plucked somewhere deep inside of me. Again, I dreamed up characters and plotted a romance around the gas station and the tiny town of Tigerton, Wisconsin. It wasn’t long and The Haven of Rest was born into print.
Noteworthy: If you look closely at the cover, you'll see the picture I took of the actual filling station in the background.
Another of my novels Love Finds You in Miracle, Kentucky (Summerside Press) was actually titled How Far Is Heaven in 2004 but never published under that title.
One morning I woke up and had the entire book’s characters and much of the plot in my head. You might say I dreamed it, although I like to think God gave me the idea while I slept.
These books are all available on my website.
Ideas for stories can come from just about anywhere and at anytime. So be alert. Be aware. Relax and take nothing that happens around you, and in your life, for granted. There’s probably a story lurking somewhere in your corner of the world.
~Andrea Boeshaar
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www.andreaboeshaar.com
4 comments:
My ideas usually come from news that makes me mad.
You're right, ideas can come from anywhere. And in my case...they do.
Max
Books For Boys Blog
http://booksandboys.blogspot.com
I write historical romances so many of my ideas come from historic newspapers on microfilm or from the archives of the historic setting for the story.
Donna Winters
http://www.greatlakesromances.com
Neighborhood tales, news, "what if..."
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