On Friday it was only five degrees colder at the North Pole than is was in some parts of Michigan (-39 in Roscommon, which is about 2 hours north of Lansing). It was cold here too. School was cancelled because of wind chill temps in the -20 range and dangers of frostbite on exposed skin within 30 minutes.

However, it was a warm day in my brain. It was like the spring thaw up there, with great ideas for three writing projects — one big backstory/plot change for my WIP I Hold the Wind, one idea for a completely new novel, and both a new plot idea and a new POV idea for a story I haven’t worked on in over a year called Life in a Minor Key. I love days like that!

The first idea came from a little news clip I heard on NPR when I was in the shower. It will help me fix an issue that has been nagging and nagging me as I’ve drafted I Hold the Wind. I captured the idea on the waterproof notepad in my shower that Zach bought for me at Christmas. The second came from a New York Times article my husband shared on Facebook. I quickly printed the article and made some notes on it at my desk. The third came as I was listening to Billy Strings and Don Julin, a fantastic folk guitar and mandolin duo I heard at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival last month. I popped in one of their CDs as I brought my son to karate Friday evening and was actually happy for the stop-and-go traffic through East Lansing so I had time to write it all down on one of the notepads I always keep in my purse.

Yesterday the ideas kept coming. On the drive home from Grand Rapids last night I had another fun idea for Life in a Minor Key. Since it was dark I didn’t want to go digging in my purse and possibly run off the road, and I didn’t want to ask my husband to write it down for me because I was hoping he was asleep after a completely sleepless night the evening before. So I repeated a key word in my head until we got home, then wrote it down while I was still in the car on the driveway. Then as I was settling into sleep myself, a great reversal for the very end of The Bone Garden popped into my mind. Again, not wanting to wake my finally sleeping husband, I carefully reached over in the dark and snagged a little notebook from the nightstand. I wrote slowly in the pitch black and was happy to see this morning that it was indeed legible.

Inspiration can come from anywhere — and everywhere! — so be ready for it. Never be without a writing utensil and something on which to write or I promise you even the best idea will vaporize.