Percolating

One of the ways I write is to sit back and let the idea percolate in my head. It's images mostly, right now I'm seeing a line of Australian Leopard Tanks along the tarmac at Haiphong International Airport. Opposite the Aussies are masses of Vietnamese tanks readying for a desperate counterattack to reclaim the airport.

The idea bubbles and simmers and becomes solid and takes form and the battle unfolds.

I do this with plot and character too.

Also percolating is Patricia Bloom's thirty eight year old character, sitting on the back deck of her Sarasota home, sadly strumming her guitar, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. She's going through an epic conflict with her neighbor, worried about her teenage daughter who is absolutely smitten with her boyfriend, and wondering if the long times of separation with Jake will ever end. 'Don't ever fall in love with a soldier,' she says out loud.

It's really an all day, everyday process. If I'm sitting in a doctors office, I'll be imagining story lines. I've been doing this since I used to get sent to sit on the Black Cushions at Furnace Woods Elementary School. I am never bored.

Today my family and I will be driving into Manhattan for my Barbara Carroll's funeral, my grandfather's wife. Along the way,, well....