Finding Story

Outside the office window, a gray and dreary day unfolds. It snowed a skiff in the night, but that has quickly turned to rain. I could be blue for the lack of sunlight. I love sunshine streaming into my office while I work, but…today, rain is perfect. With each drop of rain, a little more dirt-marred snow melts away. I can see grass and last fall’s pansies. It won’t be long before the crocuses show up. Won’t be long before I have bouquets of daffodils or lilies of the valleys scattered throughout the house in my moshy odds and ends of makeshift vases.

In my house, any vessel will do for an impromptu vase. My favorites, though, are pitchers. I’ve collected all shapes and sizes of pitchers. Aluminum, from the fifties, heavy pottery even older, glass, Fiesta ware, old yellow McCoy, a favorite and new Target. I love fistfuls of yellow daffodils in my cobalt blue Fiesta ware pitcher. Use that for a beverage? Never. And pink and white peonies in my precious McCoy…a smile maker.

Stories….

Where do writers find stories? Today I was reading this month’s Reader’s Digest. Reader’s Digest and I go way back to when I first started reading. I always found the Reader’s Digest tucked next to the toilet at my grandmother’s house and I never could resist reading anything and everything, as I explained, last blog. I love Reader’s Digest. I love the diverse subjects, the jokes, the quotes. I love quotes. I don’t know for sure where I heard it, but somewhere I heard if you read the Reader’s Digest every month, you are well read.

I’ve been collecting quotes forever. For me, a quote starts me thinking and me thinking is me writing. I use quotes to start essays, stories, and poems.

The article that got me thinking this month, How to Find Anything by Joe Kita, is filled with tons of good suggestions most of which made me smile because the answer was usually simple. But one solution made me stop, made me think, was shattering in its simplicity.

How to find God. Don’t just look up….look around. And that’s another way to find story. And just that simply, I have told you three ways to find story. Read, use quotes and look around.