How to generate character and story ideas…just walk the dog.
June 10, 2018
It’s the time of year again when the calendar days fill up so quickly, it may become difficult to carve out your own free time. It’s a busy time with graduations and graduation parties (us included, with our youngest graduating from college), mixed in with birthdays, weddings and babies (we are expecting a great niece the end of the month 😊), in between work and family responsibilities.
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Visit to Budd Inlet, Olympia
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I sit enough during the day while I work on writing projects so when I carve out free time, it doesn’t usually mean time to relax. It means getting out, walking, checking out a new trail, finding a new park, or finding new sights that I can enjoy and photograph.
Getting out benefits more than just myself, since it means I can explore with my almost six-month-old puppy, Jozee. I’m not sure I’d get out as often if it weren’t for her, so I’ll give her credit when it comes to keeping me moving more regularly. Walking, getting some fresh air, discovering new places…the combination is not only good for a growing puppy, but also for my health and my creativity.
It’s been fun the past couple of months to find ways to get out and explore the sights with Jozee. We take walks around our property or at the local city park, which is fine when I only want to take a limited break from a project, but when we can take half a day or a whole day, my husband also joins us and we’ve had fun visiting old haunts (so that Jozee can see them for the first time) or exploring new places. Part of the fun is mapping out where we’re going to go next, what trails we might hike or which parks and beaches we can visit. Whether we’re visiting local parks or areas an hour or two away, the sights, people we meet and the adventure as a whole provide me the break I need and also food for thought when I’m mapping out new story or character ideas.
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| Visit to Pacific Beach |
And meeting new people is a never-ending feature these days. One thing I’ve noticed now that I’m out and about with Jozee is how many new people you meet when you have a dog. It’s so easy to remain introverted and isolated when you’re by yourself; but when you have a dog with you, especially a puppy, the number of new acquaintances you meet is quite high, as most are dog-lovers who won’t hesitate to strike up a conversation.
Being a self-proclaimed introvert, I’m still getting used to randomly having conversations with strangers at any given moment in a pet store, on a city sidewalk, on a rural trail, at the beach or even while visiting a rest area. On the plus side, meeting so many different people during various types of situations gives me a larger deposit of character and story ideas when I’m open to receiving them.
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| Visit to the Witch’s Castle in Portland |
Case in point is a woman we met last weekend at a rural rest area on our way back from Portland. She had a little white dog and we got to talking while her dog and Jozee got to know each other. She was from Portland and was heading up to Seattle to see her daughter while her husband was on the east coast at a business meeting. We were just getting ready to leave when I walked by her vehicle and she told me that she had accidentally locked her keys, her phone, and her dog inside her vehicle. One of the volunteers working at the rest area let her use their phone to call a couple of locksmiths, but she learned the soonest anyone could get to the rest area wouldn’t be for another four hours. Four hours! It was already around 8:00 p.m. at the time she called them. She was at a loss. She couldn’t call her daughter to say she’d be (really) late because she didn’t know the number by heart; she couldn’t call her neighbor to ask them to bring her the extra key because again, she didn’t know the neighbor’s phone number by heart. She could call her husband, a number she did remember, and ask him to call their daughter and their neighbor, but he was three hours ahead of us, could already be asleep and she didn’t want to call him and worry him if it wasn’t necessary. One of the rest stop volunteers tried to jimmy the lock, but that didn’t work. Finally, she used my cell phone after we discussed contacting the state patrol, to see if they’d be willing to figure out how she might be able to get help in a shorter period of time. The 9-1-1 dispatch operator put her through to the state patrol operator, who then said she would do what she could. Since we had no idea if or when she’d receive help, we stayed with her to keep her company. It was maybe a half hour later when a tow truck operator arrived, having been sent by the state patrol to assist. It was wonderful to see him drive up and save the day, and the dog! A quick stop at a rest area for Jozee’s potty break turned in to hanging out with a complete stranger for a few hours. It was completely out of the norm, as far as what we’d expect at a rest area, but as we left that day, my mind wandered… What if…? There are so many ways this ordeal could have worked out differently, and there are many endings I could attach to it, but for now what I like to think about are the number of characters I can attribute to this visit at the rest area. Each played their part and the end result was a good one.
If we had left before knowing how things worked out, my mind would have wandered, leaving me with thoughts about the many “what if” endings my imagination could come up with. And I probably wouldn’t have been able to get to sleep because of it.
Instead, when we finally left the rest area that evening and drove the rest of the way home, it was with the satisfaction of knowing that the woman and her little dog were safely on their way to Seattle. And I was able to sleep very well.
A good ending all around. 😊
