I'm sure all of you out there in blog-land for writers have found inspirational moments/information from reading that have triggered creative production from your own pen (keys!).

This has happened to me countless times and is one of the reasons why I find my writer workshops so stimulating and inspiring.  I read only at one of these, the groups we call Sedona Serious Scribes.  This group is made up of writers who have published one or more books and have had extensive experience in the writing field–either as journalists or freelance writers.  The other three groups are made up of aspiring writiers.  A few have sold pieces and others are inspired by the group to "go and do likewise." I find evidence either among the workshop members or in my own writing that this sharing triggers ideas in us all.  

Here is one that came to me this morning–not in a workshop but by e-mail:  One son wrote that his son (the younger of my two grandsons) now a senior in college and a baseball player had pitched a no-hitter yesterday for his team.  What did this trigger for me to write about? This boy's great grandfather, my Dad, played baseball for a  recreational team made up of farmers and ranchers in the small community in Owens Valley, about 250 miles north of Los Angeles.  Dad was a pitcher and at one time was "tapped" by a professional baseball scout to come to L.A. and try out for the big leages.  Dad was, essentially, a cowboy, a cattle rancher, with an 8th grade education and refused the "big" opportunity in baseball.  I had not remembered this until this morning's e-mail "trigger." This  goes on file for future fiction.  I would not have recalled it, had I not read that e-mail this morning from my son.

Ideas for writing are available to us all daily–newspapers, TV, friends.  Record them.  You never know where they will fit into your writing.  Until tomorrow, Willma