Sometimes it is difficult for a writer to think back to what inspired them to write a specific story, the inspiration for a story can come from anywhere at any time. When I worked as an instructor in a day program for developmentally challenged adults, the Program Director one day requested that I conduct a class in creative writing. Some of the day program clients could neither read nor write, but I didn’t see the assignment would prove to be that much of a challenge. After all, a story can develop verbally as well as written. The Director had stipulated that the story’s topic should be about a hot air balloon.
The night before I was scheduled to conduct the class, I decided to write one paragraph about a hot air balloon ride as an example that I could read to my clients at the beginning of the class. The stories that developed from my clients’ imaginations that day ranged from humorous to insightful. All in all the class was enjoyed so well by the clients of the day program that the Director requested that I teach a creative “writing” class once a month, and sometimes every other week thereafter to satisfy the request of my most imaginative students. The creative writing classes allowed them to choose the subject of their stories themselves. The class allowed many of the clients to exercise their imaginations that had been bridled to that point, never having been nudged into using their imaginations to that extent before.
After I retired as an instructor, at one point I decided to join a NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writers Month) challenge. As I sat at my keyboard that first November day, contemplating what my story should be about, the paragraph about the hot air balloon I’d written as a story starter for my clients came to mind. The thought struck me that I should expand the paragraph into a 50,000 word story in the allotted 30 days.
After finishing the NANOWRIMO challenge, with an excess of 50,000 words, I put the story aside. But the story kept calling to me. After months, I finally gave in to the compulsion and polished the story into what I hoped was an interesting novel, before I went onto CreateSpace and subsequently self published it. That in essence is how my novel Libby’s Ashes came into being.
