Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Spring fever

I have been feeling really creative and restless lately because the weather has been so lovely. Sometimes I feel like the creative side of my brain goes dormant for the winter like a plant and then comes to life once the spring rains come and the sun starts shining.
Actually, I don't think I can blame the sun at all. It's the rain that does it. It's been raining and storming off and on for a few days now and we're supposed to get a big thunderstorm tonight. I love thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are right up there on my list of favorite things with coffee and flowers and fashion and color and writing. So the anticipation of waiting for a storm to hit and watching as the grey clouds roll in and the sky gets dimmer and the wind starts to blow always makes me feel poetic and literary and mysterious.
I've been wanting to write a really good mystery story for the last couple of days. One that's maybe not a typical catch-the-badguy type, but something intriguing, where it's suspenseful, but the reader really has to piece together the clues to keep up with what's really going on under the surface.
When I get like this I tend to write down a lot of random notes for stories to write. The things I jot down hardly ever make sense, but they do help inspire me later when I'm in a more practical frame of mind.
Here are some notes I jotted down during History class the other day when I was in this same restless rainy day mood. (At least the first one is somewhat related to history.)

What if we had stayed at war with the British for decades? The resistance movement would have always been there, even if Britain "won". It would have turned into an occupied country.

A bright blue bouncy ball just rolled past the car, unaccompanied. Where did it come from? What does it want?

Write a book called Blue, a book where you will only understand what is going on if you know that everything that is blue in the book is significant.

What if you were re-reading your favorite book and you discovered a code in it? Maybe reading every 10th word reveals a message, information about an unknown, unpublished work of the author and where it is hidden. Who would you show? What would you do? Would you try to find it?
~Jane~

4 comments:

Sangu Mandanna said...

I love the 'Blue' idea. It sounds so quirky and interesting.

I think really well-written mysteries, where once you know the end you can reread them and go 'oh, yeah, there's the clue!', are just amazing. Agatha Christie's awesome for that, you should try her books if you haven't already!

Sarah said...

I agree with Sangu.... that reminds me of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." The best book EVER! :)

~Sarah

Lindsey said...

Yes! I went through a phase where I read every single Agatha Christie book we had at the library.

Marian said...

Those last 2 ideas sound really good--I'd read either of those books! I could particularly relate to the last one, because I've been in a nostalgic mood lately.