How does the mind of a writer work?

People who know I write often ask me, "Where do you get your ideas?" And the truth of the matter is they just pop up. Over the next few days, weeks, months, years I will be describing in this blog an idea I just came up with this morning, how I got the idea, and my thought process as I write the story for however long it takes me to write the story.

How does the mind of a writer work? Well, if we assume it works at all, which may be generous in my case, it starts with something out of the blue. Earlier this morning for example I was reading an e-mail from an Aunt of mine (Hi, Aunt Barbara!) in which she related a story about her family being in a panic when they couldn't get in touch with her and thought something must have happened to her. (She keeps her cell phone turned off much of the time and was away from her landline, so they largely assumed the worst, despite her being quite fit and healthy.) In my reply to her I warned her to be careful of any gifts she gets from her children as the old nanny cams and doggy cams are now transitioning more and more to granny cams to keep an eye on older relatives, often without them knowing they're being watched. These cameras can be tied into a home's WiFi network and allow anyone with the password to monitor what's going on at the house.

Ding! That was the inspiration for the story I'll be writing over the next few days, weeks, months, whatever. I'm a big fan of the British comedies featuring a somewhat eccentric older woman. ("Keeping Mum" and "Saving Grace" being two of my favorites.) In my mind I could immediately see an older woman, living alone in her old house being spied on by her nervous children who think she should have someone keeping tabs on her. I'll have to set things up by having her getting into some sort of trouble first, forgetting to take her medications, getting confused about her medicines when a new pill is colored differently, or something along those lines. My main character (MC) will be an older woman, slightly on the ditzy/very early Alzheimer's side, but not too bad. She'll be living in an older neighborhood surrounded by older, somewhat eccentric neighbors. There will be an older man who forgets to wear clothes quite routinely and can often be found out mowing the grass naked. He's oddly enough a bit of an electronics buff however. (For those who know me from the QVC forums, think of him as an older, somewhat less sane hckynut.) A pair of older lesbians who have some fairly wild parties. And perhaps an older neighbor with thirty or more cats.

At the moment I'm writing this I'm about one hour from getting the initial germ of the idea so things aren't fleshed out terribly well. Our MC will have had an incident of some sort that scares her children (likely a son in the tech industry and his wife) and they beg her to give up her home and move to a safer place. (Senior center/nursing home.) She will absolutely refuse to do so. The family will be worried and unsure of what they can do. They beg her to get an emergency Life Alert type transmitter or keep her cell phone on her, but she refuses. She never needed any of that when she was younger and she's not about to use one now.  She loves her house, has something of a love/hate relationship with her neighbors, but generally loves them, and won't budge.

Her son then decides they need to be able to keep tabs on her somehow so he gives her some new appliances, a coffee maker, a clock radio, and a new clock, all of which have a hidden camera built-in. He's already wired her house for WiFi as she loves to read and uses an e-reader. So with these hidden cameras in place he's able to watch her in her bedroom (clock radio,) living room (clock,) and kitchen (coffee maker) without her being away she's being watched. It's a smallish house, so that lets him keep an eye on her pretty much wherever she goes. (Maybe he just hides the cameras in existing appliances instead of buying her new stuff? That might be a better way to go. Hmm. I'll have to think about that.)

Anyway, she returns home from the hospital for whatever reason she was in there (wrong medicines, a fall, whatever) and is unaware that she's now being monitored. She has a visiting nurse/home care nurse checking in on her every few days after her hospitalization which has her bristling at that intrusion, but she barely tolerates it. Then she stubs her toe and is limping around with a possibly broken toe and almost immediately afterwards gets a call from her daughter-in-law who'd been watching her on one of the hidden cameras. The daughter-in-law immediately asks if she's okay. Not wanting to go back into the hospital or admit to any trouble she assures her daughter-in-law that she's fine. The daughter-in-law asks if she's limping which she denies. The daughter-in-law then asks again if she isn't limping. "Why do you keep asking me that?" "I don't know, you just sound like you're limping" lies the daughter-in-law badly. The daughter-in-law knows immediately how stupid that lie sounds and tries to cover up, but the conversation soon ends and the MC is confused about that. How did her daughter-in-law know she was limping? The blinds were all closed, so none of her neighbors saw her.

She sees her older (often naked) male neighbor outside and goes to consult with him. He then tells her how nanny cams have now evolved into being granny cams and chances are her family has one or more of them in her house without her knowing it. He tells her it's likely plugged into her wireless network and that he'll help her find it, but first they have to disable her network. He disconnects her cable lead in wire from the grounding block so there's no signal going back and forth and then the pair go into the house. He asks her if they gave her anything new recently and she either tells him no, or points out the new items. (Probably the new items, it makes the story easier, finding a truly hidden hidden camera is pretty tough.) He takes the items down and examines them and finds the hidden cameras in them and shows them to her.

We're now about an hour and a half into the time from the first germ of this idea flashed into my head, so that gives you some idea of how my mind is working. As they're talking her phone rings and it's her son asking if everything is okay. (He's tried to check on her using the cameras and found the network down.) She assures him that everything is fine but that her cable is out and she's called the cable company and they're on their way to fix it. She then hangs up and knows what she wants to do. If they want to spy on her, then fine. Let them. She'll give them a show. She has her neighbor reconnect her cable line and she carries on as if the cameras aren't there, only now she decides to invent an imaginary friend to chat with and says some things to her son and daughter-in-law through the cameras that she'd never say directly to their face about how they're raising their own kids and their lifestyle. Perhaps musing to her imaginary friend (maybe a cat?) if she should tell her daughter-in-law about the time her son had that fling with another boy who's now a drag queen, and perhaps on another day musing whether she should tell her son how his wife flirts with a clerk in a local store whenever they shop there.

She then invites her lesbian neighbors, who hold a fairly wild strip poker part at their house most weekends to hold the party at her house this week as she'd love to partake. The son and daughter-in-law tune in to see what dear old mum is up to and find a group of sixty, seventy, eighty year old semi-clothed women playing poker and doing a wild striptease by the losers of each hand. One day she notices her sometimes naked neighbor out mowing his grass and invites him in and parks him in front of the coffee maker in his full nude grandeur as she makes him a nice lunch. (Does she plant a camera in their house to know when they're watching her and scheme accordingly? That could be interesting, but tricky. No, probably not since they could also monitor her on their smartphones. Perhaps she figures out the time they'll be watching, or sets them up to watch at certain times?) Her older cat lady neighbor  may be a medicinal marijuana user and the two get together to smoke a few joints from time to time, further shocking her children.

Now, how does the story end? Does something happen to her and the cameras save the day? Does she come clean on knowing the cameras were there and she was putting on an act? Do the children go to court using the granny cam footage to try and have her declared incompetent? (That could be good if one of her witnesses is her often nude neighbor who shows up for the hearing nude.) In fact I kind of like that approach the best. Not just him, but all of the neighbors show up for her defense. That could be the best ending.

Now, what will this story be? A novel? Novella? Short story? Perhaps a script for a movie or a play? I don't know. I'll have to find out how it develops as the writing goes on. It could evolve into any of them over time. But there you have it. It's been about two hours now since the very first germ of the idea formed and this is where things now stand. Soon I'll open up a blank page in my word processor and figure out where to start, likely setting the scene first. Perhaps an ambulance pulling up to the small house and the crew rushing inside to find the unconscious main character and her family who found her and called the ambulance? Of course, then comes the hard part, naming the characters. I'm kind of basing this in my mind on  my grandmothers old neighborhood with her neighbor Pearl, an odd older guy who would occasionally be outside naked named Augie. (I have no idea what Augie was short for.) That type of setting is pretty good for this story. A quiet little neighborhood on the outskirts of small town America.

So, you now know where I got this idea. How it's evolved in the first two hours of it's formation. What inspired it (the British comedies I love.) And some idea for how it will all play out. This is how the mind of a writer works. I may go days, weeks, months without an idea popping in, but then one does and bang! It's off to the races with it. In my head I can see the characters, I can see the settings, I can see the scenes. It's all there. Now comes the hard part, putting it on paper without losing too much of what I see, feel, hear, know. There's a good, funny, sweet, possibly heart warming story in there. There are no real villains or heroes, just a eccentric cast of characters who are all living their lives. All I've got to do now is capture them and get them down on paper.