What’s in a Word? Sources of Writing Inspiration

Let me introduce guest blogger Laura Trutna, who writes about how sometimes a given word will get the mind moving and working to reshape nonsense into something eloquent. Welcome Laura.

What’s In a Word?  Sources of Writing Inspiration

I am a writer. Not the kind with a capital “W.” I haven’t been published, nor will I be in the forseeable future. But I consider myself a writer because writing is something I can’t imagine myself not doing. I find it enriching and consider it a productive, even necessary, way to spend free time.

Of course, it also brings me the frustration of getting stuck, often firmly, in a rut. Inevitably this begs the question, can I escape?

My favorite writing professor in college was also my adviser. The first class I took with him my freshman year was one designed to teach strong writing skills using nontraditional means.

What that meant was choosing strange and sometimes Dr. Seussian topics and making them coherent.  He believed that if we could be eloquent about crap then we could write about anything.

One of his first exercises involved choosing three students at random and asking them to choose a word. In the end, our first topic was “Bobsled Spatula Karate,” and I turned in a story about a world-renowned perfumer who moonlighted as an international spy.

Now when I get stuck doing any piece of writing, I turn to the nearest person and ask him or her to choose a word. The result isn’t always a masterpiece, but it gets my mind moving and working to reshape nonsense into something eloquent. Sometimes a given word will provide an insight into a character or situation, and all I had to do was ask.

Writing in solitude has never appealed to me. Squirreling myself away in an office or on a quiet park bench sounds dull, and I’m sure would result in me chasing my own tail until I ended up chastising myself for not being bigger, better, faster, stronger.

I love crowded places. I live in the same town where I went to college, so sometimes I’ll sit in the basement of the student center or in a coffee shop near campus and watch people.

A favorite activity is to record conversations. Laymen may be inclined to call this “evesdropping” but I prefer to call it a “process”. I write down the snippets of dialogue around me, no context. Later, on rereading, they can be funny or confusing or dark. Which is hard to say. But context and character are in the eye of the beholder.

I’ve found that doing something fun, spontaneous, and physically engaging, can relax me enough to get out of my own way.

I once visited a nearby farming town for the sole purpose of checking out the old local saloon. The only inhabitants were the proprieter and one of his off-duty bartenders. I learned more in two hours than in six years of living in the area.

I learned that the town’s speed limit is low because the farmers don’t want drivers to kill their bees; that their seemingly humble operation is the largest producer of alfalfa worldwide; and that the bartender, Krista, likes to spend hot summer days with her farm-boy friends sitting under the shade tree with a cooler of beer, taunting her ex-husband as he drives the wheat thresher.

This activity created a portrait of life that was fascinating and useful.

Whatever you choose doesn’t have to be a trip to a new place, but perhaps cooking a meal or sketching or exercising. Busy hands, free mind.

When all else fails, I turn to my own memories.

When I was younger, maybe 16, I went on a trip with my parents to Odessa, Texas to visit my mother’s grandmother, Mimi. She was 90 and scared the hell out of me.

She grabbed my forearm as I went to the fridge for a soda, and pulled me down the hall. Inside the spare bedroom, there was a cheap, laminate wood dresser with one of those old oxidized mirrors. I’d never believed Mimi to be at all senile, but as she led me to this dresser and opened one of the drawers, I wasn’t entirely sure.

Mumbling to herself, she pulled things out, mundane items like unopened panty-hose and lotion and cheap wrist watches. Each one had a tag that listed its price, the year it was purchased, and the location: silver chain, $9.99 at Belles, 1994.

I never knew what to think of it, and she never told me I had to. Was it important? I don’t know. My memories, my great-grandmother’s shared ones, they’re an example, something to be pulled out of a dusty drawer on a quiet day and examined. And hopefully, from this organic matter, will grow something worth reading.