storytelling

My good friend Suz keeps a journal of observations. This is something I wish I could school myself to do, if only because it's fun to read over things you wrote down in a hurry a year ago. For example, Suz wrote recently: on the way home I saw a woman driving an old station wagon with a bear skin tied onto the roof. This very John-Irvingish observation will be alive for her as long as she keeps her journals. No doubt that particular image will make it into one of her non-fiction pieces or poems.

Once in a while I'm able to write down observations for a longer stretch, but sooner or later I always fall out of the habit. Oh and, it's not just observations I write down -- that any writer should keep track of -- but also overheard dialogue. I've written about that here at some earlier point. If I weren't so lazy I'd go search.

Another excellent place to look for story ideas and writing prompts is to keep track of advice columnists. The stories people write in about range from the mundane to the catastrophic, but such letters can be a goldmine of evocative images and strange ideas. In the last six months or so I've been reading Cary Tennis's advice column at Salon.com. Tennis is a psychologist or a psychiatrist, a doctor at any rate, with many years of experience as a therapist, and so he answers letters from readers. And he's good at it.

Now, this is Salon we're talking about so you don't get the dear-abby-esque "where do I sit my mother-in-law at luncheon" type questions. Most of the letters Tennis answers are pretty serious in nature -- heroin addiction was a recent topic -- but others are lighter and even funny. Here are some recent columns and the tag line for each:

My sister's addicted to heroin
Is there anything I can do to help her? Pay her rent? Get her into rehab? Tell her new husband?
By Cary Tennis [2005-01-20]

Long-lost friendship
After 30 years it pains me how these once-dear friends are so cold and aloof!
By Cary Tennis [2005-01-19]

We're in love, but there's a cultural barrier
I'm not Muslim and I'm the wrong ethnicity, so my girlfriend is afraid to tell her family about us.
By Cary Tennis [2005-01-18]

Who's my daddy?
I want a boyfriend who acts like the father I never had.
By Cary Tennis [2005-01-14]

The cat in my flat won't go back (my ex left her pussy in my lap!)
Her kitty is one more problem she has thrust on me -- and I don't know how to get rid of it.
By Cary Tennis [2005-01-13]

I had a one-night stand, and now my wife says no more drinking!
It's not the drinking that made me do it -- I like to have a few beers is all.
By Cary Tennis

Every single one of these gave me multiple ideas for characters and/or conflicts. Most of which -- maybe all of which -- I won't write. But still it gets my mind working in that story-telling way, and that is always good.

Salon.com is, unfortunately, a subscription service, and you may not want to invest in it. But there are lots of advice columnists about there, and many of them are great material for a mind atuned to the oddities of the human mind and the way we relate to one another.

Just a suggestion, of course.

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