Sunny day ideas

Well, it was another sunny day, so of course, I got plenty of story ideas. Too bad they all came about a week late for this fiction project. I will admit, one of the ideas came during our discussion in class time. Here's a list of stuff I thought up to write about today:

-On my way to my 8 a.m. class I hit my right pointer finger that I hurt last night in the great glass explosion. I'm pretty sure there's some glass in there cause my finger hurt when I hit it. Anyway, that made me think of the weirdest idea during the rest of my drive. What if human skin just naturally engulfed things like glass shards or that type of thing? Kind of like macrophages engulfing cell debris and pathogens. Oh and I love the word macrophages, by the way. It's always been a favourite biology term. Just thought I'd add that in there. Anyway, for months I've tried to think of a cool, science fiction-ish idea for a short story that could rival "Breathing Exercises" from Maps in a Mirror by Orson Scott Card. It's probably one of my favourite non-typical short stories. I really wish I could write stories like that, but this is the first idea that's even semi-close to that idea that I've had on the subject. It needs some refining, but it might be interesting.

-In Creative Writing class I was kind of letting my mind wander, but heard when Mr. Lale was talking about that movie with the guy with the daughter that got involved in the current slave industry. That immediately made me think of some good family friends, the Thorp's. They traveled all over the world for stuff with the GC and as lay people and now they work at the Hope Channel. Anyway, when their three boys were young they were in Bulgaria and their kids were almost kidnapped into the beggar industry in Sofia. Only because of their responsible and obedient oldest son, Jonathon, were the boys saved from the kidnapping and probable disfigurement of the child beggar life. From there I thought of Deborah Ellis' book The Breadwinner and the other two books in that series, Parvana's Journey and Mud City. I thought that a book like those about the children street beggars in Sofia, Bulgaria would be an new idea for an older kids book (unless it's already been done, but I sure haven't seen anything like that out yet).

-I don't remember what triggered this idea, but somehow I started thinking about twins. Authors seem to love writing about twins. They love to either compare how similar twins are to each other or contrast how different twins are from each other. But I was wondering if there are twins that aren't either just like their twin or totally different from them. What if some twins just are absolute compliments to each other. Oh, now I remember what I was thinking of that gave me this idea. I was thinking about how different people's taste buds are from each other. What makes some people absolutely love mushrooms and other people absolutely hate them? Well, what if there was a set of twins that was different than each other in completely compliment ways. One twin hated eating mushrooms and the other loved them and ate all the first twins uneaten mushrooms. And then the mushroom-loving twin hated vacuuming, but the first one loves it. OK, I'm not explaining this very well, but I hope you get my drift. It'll be interesting to see how I could explain it to make sense and if it would work in a story setting.

-This afternoon I was putting a book back into my bookshelf and saw The Whipping Boy, which made me think of rat catchers, which made me wonder what the son of a dog catcher would feel about all those poor caught dogs that are probably going to be put down. Then I questioned if there really are such things as dog catchers. I mean I've heard of them for a long time, but I've never seen a dog catcher in real life. Those two dog catchers on the second Homeward Bound movie don't count. Anyway, I thought a book called The Dog Catcher's Son could prove to be an poignant story. Not really sure how it'd all work out right now, but it's so seldom that I think of titles before I think of story ideas that I just had to include that in the list of ideas I got today.

-In orchestra rehearsal I wanted to write something in our music and I grabbed the mechanical pencil that my stand partner keeps in our folder. It got stuck in the pencil holder part, but finally I got it out and tried to write on the music, but then the pencil lead wasn't clicked out, so that took up more time. Then I started wondering who invented pencil lead. From there I started wondering who invented erasers. I think that's a really ingenious idea. I mean what in the world was the process that lead someone to invent a way to erase pencil markings? All I can say is that is one creative person! Anyway, since I like school and office supply stuff so much I thought about researching who invented which useful school or office supplies. Might not make the most interesting book, but it'd sure be fun to know the stories behind how each item was invented.

-It was different in the Accent office tonight. Our editor and managing editor were gone so the copy editor was in charge. I was glad I wasn't put in charge, but I decided to be nice and help the copy editor out. I usually don't read over each page of the Accent; I just read over the news pages and make edits where I see fit. But since we were two people short today I read over the entire Accent. It didn't actually even take all that much longer. I think we might be getting quicker or more organized or more efficient or something like that. (I even had time to finalize and e-mail out my news budget for next week.) So as I was looking over a page to find widows and orphans I realized that there are very few true to life books about widows and orphans out there. At least most of the stuff I've read has been very dramatized and romanticized, which I really can't stand. Now I've never been a widow or an orphan, but I do have some very small bit of insight into the world of orphans or at least children not living with their biological parents. Two of my siblings were adopted. My older sister was adopted when she was, I believe, less than two-years-old from Pakistan by my mum's cousin's family. For years there was strife in that family about the adoption and in the end it didn't work out. When my sister was eleven and a half and I was nearly two-years-old, my parents adopted my sister. It's been an interesting journey ever since and certainly not the type of romanticized situation that you typically read about in orphan books (much as I adore Anne of Green Gables, it's definitely a work of fiction). Later, when I was just about nine, my parents adopted a six-year-old boy who was four months younger than my younger sister. This was a totally different situation and my younger siblings and I, even at our young ages, learned a lot about hurt and abused children and their coping methods. Because of this experience my younger siblings and I had to grow up a lot sooner than most young kids do. In the long run, I'm thankful we had those experiences because it taught us about dealing with drastic life changes, being able to go-with-the-flow, life in the real world, and, most of all, pulling together as a family to work things out. I long to write about my experiences as a sibling to adopted children, but I've been scared to for a long time because I don't want to just write what people want to read. I want to write the truth and I don't think many people want to read or hear about that. (When I read a new release by my favourite children's lit. author almost two years ago, I was sorely disappointed with her for writing exactly what people want to hear and having a perfectly happy ending. I know that's what the public wants, I know it's what sells books, but it's just not the truth in the majority of cases.) I've attempted to write about my adopted brother several times, but it never came out right and I have given up altogether for a long time. I think I might be ready to try again. I'm not sure if the best way would be to write memoir or non-fiction or if it'd be best to write as fiction. Anyway, at some point in the future I'd like to write my experiences from my early childhood with my older sister and then also from the experiences with my younger brother from a few years later.

-Also in the Accent office tonight, we were trying to come up with last minute photo ideas. We pooled our ideas and came up with a good solution. That got me thinking about photography. It seems to be a really popular career these days and an even more popular past time. I should know...I've got a mother and sister who LOVE taking pictures. I don't really mind though cause I get to be a model which is usually pretty fun and I've got thousands of pictures to show my kids someday. I was wondering what story idea could include photography and I wondered if there was some way that an author could use a picture for a book cover and then have the whole storyline come from a part of that picture or different areas of the photo or be about the people or place or objects in the picture...or all of those things. I might try that out sometime.

-When I came back to my apartment after work tonight, I found a bee flying around the living room. As I was shooing it outside (which had to be done twice since it just flew right back in after the first time) I thought that I haven't seen too many bee-keeper books for young kids. If I ever do try my hand at a kids picture book, maybe I'll use a bee or bee-keeper storyline. Maybe I'll even write it from a bee's perspective like this picture book we had as kids about a spider living in a log and his troubles when his log all of a sudden gets used for a fire in this man's fire place (can't recall the title of the book right now, but it's a pretty good one).

Well, those are the ideas I thought of today. Give me your feedback. They're not all stellar ideas, I know, but I thought I might as well jot them down in here while I've still got them sloshing around in the back of my brain.