Many of us are oddities, and we embrace this fact. Writers, many know, are strange folk. But I think we see things that others do not, whether it’s merely perceiving it with our eyes, or finding meaning in the seemingly normal things we come across each day. (Like deciding that the guy in the trench coat at the grocery store is wielding an Uzi under his jacket).

Yesterday, we had to make a visit across the border, into Michigan, to pick up an incubator for my husband. No, not to incubate him, but the many eggs his chickens have laid in recent days. Anyway, we passed a pick-up truck with a giant Bat-Symbol on the back. My husband didn’t think anything of it, but I wondered who the driver of the vehicle was. Does he think he’s Batman? Does he think he’s a superhero? Does he just like Batman so much that he chose to display this fact on a $40,000 vehicle? Or maybe he’s trying to compensate for things?

My need to observe and evaluate is handy because it helps me to shape the characters in my books. Rather than hollow personalities, I want them to have quirks that you would find in your friend, your parent, your brother. You can almost imagine that a guy with a Bat-Symbol on the back of his pick-up is a young partier, one who probably never really fit in in school, but had a few good (weird) friends that he still hangs out with in his small town where he works at a local factory. Just my guess. Could be totally wrong. Maybe it’s an older woman who had some part in the making of the Michael Keaton Batman series (I say series but I guess he only did the two movies–let’s add Val Kilmar and George Clooney to that series). You never know.

That’s what I love about imagination. You can create any damned scenario in your head that you want, and somehow be able to find a place for it in a story. And the thing about imagination is that it keeps you entertained even when you’re bored out of your mind, sitting in the truck trying to entertain a cranky, hungry baby while your husband is inside a giant warehouse picking up electronic Styrofoam.

That giant blueberry? Could think of many places that thing came from. Many would think “Why bother wasting time thinking about it?”… but they would not be writers. As writers, we are always ON, our creative minds never turn off, we’re always trying to spin some crap and make it believable. We’ll be sitting in the car, spaced out, while our spouses turn to us and say, “Blah blah blah” (that’s you tuning them out while you think about your ever so important crap) and suddenly you shout “Eureka!” and try to find some piece of paper to write down your idea because God forbid you forget anything.

I drive my husband nuts with this behaviour, or the constant, “Did that sound okay?”, “Are you sure that makes sense?”, “Are you sure they’ll like it?”… ah, the neediness. That’s a post for another day.

Anyway, this post has no real point, I know. It’s merely my mind rambling. I just wanted to point out that if you find something odd or interesting, use it somehow. You know the phrase “It’s so ridiculous that it HAS to be true!”?? Try to get away with that in your writing. You never know where it’ll work and explode out of the paper, or where it will shrivel up and die. But you have try. Your imagination should always be working.