By Jennie
Atkins
Have you
ever seen that holiday commercial where a person takes a picture, likes it, and
says its “card worthy”?
As writers, we
experience, watch, or hear about ideas that are “novel worthy”. They can become
the basis of our whole story, be a memorable scene, or just something that falls
perfectly into our plot.
I have just
moved into a sprawling three-bedroom ranch on four acres, in a peaceful country
community. With every
move, one expects a few hiccups along the way and we’ve had a few that could
fall into my “novel worthy” bucket.
Upon arriving
at our new home, we found the guest bathroom beautifully decorated with bits of
toilet paper. Yes, my bathroom had been T. P.’d! Hanging on the cabinets,
adorning the towel racks, and draping over the edge of the tub were streams of
toilet paper. I am assuming at this
point, the kids did it, but do you think they’d used it in the traditional
manner? No way! The toilet paper roll was empty and they had
used heavy brown paper towels in its place.
Needless to say it stopped up the toilet and the main line flowing (or
not flowing in this case) from that bathroom to the septic system.
Another “novel
worthy” even occurred when my daughter went to use our one and only outside
hose. When turned on it emitted a stream of hot water, but then again, the hose
had laid in the sun. Nothing amiss with
that—except—instead of cooling down, the water got hotter! The builders had tied the outside faucet into
the hot water line—not quite what we were expecting.
As I stated
above, we have a deck that runs the length of the house. It sagged and bounced and it was already on
our to-do list to rebuild in the spring.
What we hadn’t realized was the propane tank was attached to the flexible
boards of the deck. When you walk on the
deck, the propane lines are in motion. Can
anyone say…Kaboom!?!?!
Needless to
say, I’m filing these away as nuggets I can use later.
Your turn – Do you have any moving stories (or
nightmares) that are novel worthy?
Unfortunately, novel worthy events are usually not pleasant ones. But if there's no black moments or tension in our novels, no one would really want to turn the page. And no reason to exercise faith in real life or bring glory to God if we had no troubles.
ReplyDeleteLast week I would've said I didn't, but this week after a wild weekend where my nephew was helicoptered to a hospital 100 miles away with sepsis and a bp of 80/40 and a heart rate of 138...I can see how I might use that in a book!
ReplyDeleteKitchen deck at my farm house included a special stairway for their potbelly pig that grew to 200 lbs., bathed in the bath tub, slept (& puddled) in the master bdrm., now mine. That's the 1st room I bought new carpet for. My grandson proudly crawled up that outside stairway saying he'd found a new way to come into the house. His screech and the expression on his face when I told him its previous use was priceless. Glad you're in and (relatively) safe.
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