Fuel for the Imagination

What fuels your brain? That is a question writers get asked.

A lot.

For some, it is a hard one to answer concisely, as we writers get our inspiration from a variety of sources. For others, it is a quick reply steeped in direct language that paints a great picture.

For me?

Well, it is one of those questions that borders on the insane, sprinkled with a bit of lunacy, and topped off with a wild imagination that takes reality and spins it around and around until it blends nicely together and sips well. Like a margarita or really for me, a wonderful single malt Scotch.

Two drams straight, or with a small ice cube to open the flavors up. But, only ice if it’s not a well-aged single malt.

I like my tasty single malts straight.

I base my books in part with aspects familiar to me. The real world feeding me tidbits of stories, tales that I hear from people I know, or from my own weirdly strange experiences that I decide to include, but twist up for prime time consumption.

What might be true, or based on truth, I’ll never tell!

You’re a strange one, writer man.

Yes! Yes I am!

What drives my inspiration, and my quite vivid imagination and dreams, is the ability to take a fact, story, image, or whatever might be compelling in its own right, and like a piece of clay, turn the table around and around, add a bit of water to soften it up, and shape it into a figurine or bowl that speaks to me.

Maybe a nice coffee cup with a fanciful glaze on the outside.

Whatever it may be, the process is what really determines whether something passes the smell test. For my adult fiction, I ruminate on an idea for a long time. Whatever has grabbed my attention, it must first bounce around in my brain. While my imaginative self is quite the thinker, I want a believability, a semblance of an ounce of potential truth, to be the foundation of a story. A real event, a personal experience, a chance encounter. Those feed my thoughts and whether I can take one and create an illusion around it.

Yup.

Take Pandemic-19 for example. The story and plot are rooted in bits and pieces of actual facts. The events that transpire not too far outside of a “what-if” scenario if we believe that a virus can turn the world upside down and wreck havoc like never before.

The Black Plague, or Black Death. It and its lingering effects killed an estimated 200 million plus people over the span of 500 years. The Spanish Flu of 1918. An estimated 500 million plus people devoured by the effects.

Covid-19. Current count at over 6 million people and still going as variants morph and take on new numbers.

In Pandemic-19, I “borrowed” Covid-19 as an example. Took real events and twisted them around to create a story. While some were grounded in actual truth, others took a far wide latitude to weave into my plot to create suspense and intrigue. The hints at reality, things that have a foundation or grounding in something real, allow for the potential to make them “possible” if all the stars align, the dice roll a certain way, the chips fall as they may.

You get the idea.

For me, it is the “maybe” factor, the thought that what transpires in my books could actually come to be, that makes them to the reader in me, absolutely fascinating! Not that I wish for any event, idea, thought, plot, etc. that occurs in any of my books to become real.

Oh, hell no.

I prefer the tranquility of my actual life without the need to survive in a post-pandemic and apocalyptic universe where life hangs in the balance and I am one step ahead of death.

Much like my poor protagonist, Ryan Carmichael.

However, and to me, this is the creepy and kooky part, with the way I research and dive into details, hunt for information and descriptions, there lies in my words a certain truth that we are close to living my vision if we are not careful.

Or, are we?

See, that is the crucial razor’s edge I like to present to my audiences. Give some truths, stretch some facts, turn upside down what we think or thought we know, embellish some, and outright fudge the details in such a way that it makes you wonder.

The cerebral writing approach.

While my books are strictly for entertainment, and I am the first to say that the ones meant for a mass audience are there for enjoyment and are not necessarily award-winning material (not yet at least!), they do present moments where as a reader you question things.

Wonder if what you read came from the news a few weeks back. Was read online somewhere. Heard someone talking about it while in line for coffee.

Maybe, even you lived it.

No matter your personal reference point, be assured that everything was constructed within the confines of my head. While certain descriptions may seem very familiar, be certain that they are there to reel you in and feed your own imagination and make you wonder. Ponder a word or a sentence. Think twice about what is there in black and white in front of you. I use the real, and the not so real, to create my worlds.

That’s what I do.

The mind can be a blank slate, able to construct just about anything it wants, and then let loose a torrent of the absurd or mesmerizing depending on the topic. It’s what makes humans human, the ability to dream up new things from scratch and create an idea from nothing.

However.

I venture to say that we writers, even in the utmost sanitary white rooms of the far recesses of our vivid thoughts, subconsciously get a spark from some previously seen, heard, felt, or otherwise were exposed to some vague snippet that plants a tiny dormant seed. It then sits below the surface until another “thing” hits us, and then we get a fire within to create.

While we can design from scratch a thought and plot, there is some tie to a previously experienced encounter. Even, of we do not realize it.

You’re getting a bit out there writer dude.

No, think about it. If we were confined in a small room with no interactions of any kind, heard not a sound, saw nothing but darkness, felt no sensations at all, what do we have in our minds on the shelf to use? I’d say not a whole lot at all.

That’s where life comes into play.

From birth, or when you’re hatched if you want to throw in a joke, we consume. Breathe in the air, see the sights, feel the breeze. It all plays into what our eyes, ears, noses, and skin take into account as it all gets cataloged, filed, and the library cards created in the vast expanses of our skulls. As we grow, the rooms begin to fill up and the buildings expand into a vast complex broken into wings and departments that specialize in specific areas.

Don’t forget the miscellaneous shacks on the outskirts of the property.

All of these come along for the ride of life, until we need them. Then, we get more and more. It’s never-ending and just keeps going on and on.

Seems like you have gone off on a tangent, Mister. Isn’t this about fuel for the imagination?

Yup.

It all adds up my dear friends. The fuel, as I say, is a culmination of our lives, the present we get bombarded with daily, and the future that is a day away. Take this very moment in time. What can a writer use as a plot point or storyline that is ripped from today?

My goodness!

Take your pick!

There is so much smacking us in the face that it is overwhelming if you don’t take a step back and do your own sanity check. This goes for any genre, fiction and non-fiction, and whatever you might want to write. The amount of information you can possibly utilize to sit down and put pen to paper is over a billion times a billion squared.

OK, I might have taken some liberty with that one.

Seriously though, today as compared to even fifty years ago, the advent of technology and social media, coupled with a more global world, has provided an exposure of such magnitude to fuel for the imagination that it dwarfs comprehension. If you tried to discuss today in the past with someone, you time traveled, you likely would be marked a witch, demon, or some other hideous characterization that would see you find your way to the gallows.

Ouch!

That’s what a creative imagination used to get you in the end. A really elongated neck.

And, dead.

Today, nothing is off limits as far as what you take in and can conceivably mold into a story. Well, maybe there should be, but I am not the book police so I’ll leave that to others to ponder the repercussions.

There is an abundance of material out there in the stratosphere that can be bounced around inside the mind and thrown on the fire to let a blaze burn bright. Stoke the embers and add some tinder and gasoline even. Limitless ways to develop words and sentences into coherent dialog and paragraphs from our very own gray matter and neurons.

Life fuels us. Good or bad, it is true.

You know it too.