Category: Brainstorming & Inspiration

Big ideas and how to get them.

Golden Oldies

To help set the mood for the era we’re writing about, the late 1960s, we’ve been listening to a bunch of music from that time. Or rather, Jen’s been listening to most of it, and Kent has been indulging her when she comes across something particularly cool or particularly weird that she just needs to share.

The music is a mix of incredibly familiar songs and total headscratchers. For every Beatles classic, there’s a Pigmeat Markham or a Peppermint Trolley Co. For every Beach Boys song we know, there are two we were completely unaware of (that, incidentally, sound nothing like the Beach Boys).

Kent has observed that once enough time passes, a decade becomes its own musical genre, and songs that never would have been played on the same station all get lumped together because they’re of a similar vintage. This experiment is like that on steroids. We’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra, Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, and a bunch of artists we’d never heard of. Did you know that Ray Charles had a cover of Eleanor Rigby? Or that The Tijuana Brass had a version of My Favorite Things? We didn’t! But we do now.

A writing partner will ride shotgun in your musical time machine.

Whiteboard Jr

The newest addition to the SkelleyCo Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises, LLC family is a second whiteboard! This one is somewhat smaller than its big brother, and has really high-quality wheels. It’s perfect for the writer on the go! No more excuses for Rune Skelley! Doing laps around the neighborhood? This bad boy can tag along! Going to the roller disco? He’s already wearing his shiny white suit!

We weren’t really in the market for a backup whiteboard, but when Jen saw it at the salvage center, her brain lit up with potential uses for it. (Maps! Plot rainbow overflow! Character inspiration photos! Murder board!) There was no talking her out of it, which Kent must have known because he didn’t try very hard.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere, akin to “don’t go grocery shopping hungry” or “don’t go to the animal shelter unless you really want a pet.” Keep Jen out of the stationery aisle and, apparently, the used office furniture warehouse.

A good writing partner is someone who can admit he was wrong about the number of whiteboards your office needs.

Au Revoir Red Envelopes

While we’re on the subject of stone-age technology, let’s talk about DVDs. Jen and Kent are big proponents of old school media. We like owning physical copies of the things we love. We buy books and albums, subscribe to a small number of print magazines and even (gasp!) the local newspaper. And we still have a DVD subscription from Netflix. At least for the next month until they kill the service. During the early days of the pandemic we started a project to watch all the classic movies we’ve never seen. That expanded to include spooky movies for research as we write the As Yet Untitled Ghost Novels.

Now that Netflix is cutting us off we’ve been looking around for a way to scratch the same itch. We haven’t made a final decision yet, but it seems like we’ll probably add a couple of channels to our stable of streaming services, like the Criterion Channel, NightFlight, and AMC+.

A good friend of ours was an early adopter of Netflix, a million years ago, and when she told us about how this company would just send you DVDs in the mail, as many as you could watch, we were sure it must be some sort of scam. And now here we are at the end of an era, wishing it didn’t have to stop.

Vinyl Fantasy

The Auxilliary Writing Cave has lots of nice features, such as a fireplace and big, comfy furniture. A thing there that we haven’t brought up is our vinyl collection and — hold onto your butts — functional turntable. Lately we’ve made it a project to listen to all our albums (and EPs and rare 12-inch singles and everything else that the turntable can handle).

Music during writing sessions is something that brings out strong opinions. For us, the formula is that music is always good, but if what we’re doing is editing rather than composing or discussing then it has to be instrumental. For some weird reason, the lyrics don’t interfere with our ability to make up new sentences, yet they very much impede us when we’re trying to make adjustments to existing ones.

Our library of vinyl won’t be setting any records (ha!) but it is pretty big. Takes up about four feet of shelf space. It’s also a blend of Jen’s and Kent’s collections, reflecting their sometimes diverging musical interests. That divergence is actually highlighted when we consider what we have on vinyl specifically, because that format aligns with our teenage phases.

So, in an effort to devise a fair method of going through the whole stack without either or both of us going bonkers, we chose to select from alternating ends of the shelf. Currently we’re in the middle of the Star Wars soundtrack, which was preceded by the rather distracting Looney Tunes collection. We do own actual albums by actual bands, honest. Apparently our filing system has a sense of humor.

A writing partner is someone who’ll flip the record for you once in a while.

A Galaxy Far Far Away

A few months ago we went on a trip with Jen’s sister and brother-in-law. The four of us booked passage on the Chandrila Starcruiser the Halcyon, and traveled to Black Spire Outpost on Batuu.* It was a very eventful trip!

We got to visit the bridge, and we had lightsaber training. The intergalactic superstar Gaya even performed several shows! Planetside on Batuu, we had a few scrapes with smugglers and the First Order, but we managed to make it out safely.

During all the excitement, the Halcyon was boarded by the First Order, and we had to choose whether to align ourselves with them or with the Rebels. Not a difficult choice, but some of our fellow passengers got it wrong. It all ended with a climactic lightsaber duel right in front of us.

Stormtrooper!, Hoth Icebreaker, the bunks in our cabin
On the bridge, the Halcyon’s registry, surprise visit from Chewbacca
Millennium Falcon, Batuu street scene, Mando!
Lightsaber action!

* We actually went to DisneyWorld, and stayed in the Galactic Starcruiser hotel. It’s a couple days of live action roleplaying with other Star Wars fans. There’s a storyline, and the entire staff stay in character the whole time. It’s pricey, but it’s a total blast. And it’s closing soon, so if you’re interested, make your reservation today.

 

Worth the Wait – Czech Republic

Last stop Prague! A beautiful city we’d visited once before, but we had our son with us last time and there are certain sites that aren’t the sort of things you want to visit with your child (see the red photo below).

Between Budapest and Prague we drove through Slovakia. Sadly the only stop we made was at the border. We saw Bratislava from a distance, and hope to visit for real some day in the future.

Our trip was quite long, and we didn’t even pretend that we were going to do any writing while we were gone. We didn’t even take our laptops. We’ve been writing As Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1 for about a year now, and it was really nice to look away. We came back refreshed and ready to put fingers to keyboards. As writers, we use the world around us as inspiration for our stories. Travel is a magnificent way to broaden our scope and add novelty to the idea bank. A certain location in the Ghost Series is in Eastern Europe, so if the IRS asks, this was a research trip. Our location is made up, but being able to see the landscape in person was a great help.

A good writing partner is someone you enjoy sharing a hotel room and every meal with, and someone who loves to look at your vacation photos.

Prague Astronomical Clock, St Vitus cathedral, Good King Wenceslas atop his dead horse
Two views of Prague TV tower covered with giant babies, the Museum of Sex Machines, Tyn Church
Franz Kafka’s head performs a 15-minute choreographed dance every hour

Worth the Wait: Hungary

The penultimate stop on our whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe was Hungary. Our Budapest hotel was centrally located on the Pest side of the river, and if the Chain Bridge had been open it would have been perfect. Alas, the Chain Bridge was closed for construction, which meant a lot of added walking for us when we wanted to check out the Buda side. Ah well, it keeps us fit.

Buda is the hilly side. We rode the funicular to the top and explored the Castle District at ground level, underground in the labyrinth (complete with subterranean fog), and high up in the towers of Fisherman’s Bastion (with a cup of mulled wine).

Budapest has tons of thermal hot springs. We visited Gellert Baths, a classic that opened in 1918. It has co-ed changing rooms, about a dozen pools, inside and outside, at various temperatures, and gorgeous architecture. We don’t have pictures of it because we didn’t want to dunk our phones, but you can do an image search if you’re curious.

Don’t fret. We have pictures of other things.

Hungarian parliament by night, Buda Castle as seen from our hotel room
War tubas, Fisherman’s Bastion
Run!! aka an amusing construction site, stained glass Lenin at the Museum of Communism, women’s restroom at the Museum of Communism, Monkey Bistro advertising truck, outrageous meat concoction, the horse that stole Kent’s heart

Worth the Wait Part 4: Croatia

Next stop: a very rainy Croatia!

In an attempt to stay dry, we hit up a grocery store in Vukovar and raided the snack aisle. Unfamiliar foods make great holiday gifts, just ask our family!

We visited Osijek Fortress, and walked around the old town where many buildings have bullet damage from the war in the 1990s. It was a sobering reminder of the current atrocities in Ukraine.

It was very interesting and educational to experience this different side of Croatia (literally). Previously, we’ve been to Dubrovnik and Split, which are full of palm trees and Adriatic zephyrs. We did see some bullet holes on that trip too, though.

To end on a lighter note, we met an orange chonker of a cat named Garfield. He was very sweet.

Sexxy church dude, pagan-looking straw rabbits and dragon, the scariest doorway in Croatia
war memorial in Vukovar, bullet damage in Osijek, Vukovar plaza
Osijek sports complex, Osijek window detail, Osijek Fortress

Worth the Wait Part 3: Serbia

Our tour through Eastern Europe continued in Serbia. We hiked through Djerdap national park to take in a view of the Danube (and Romania across the river). At an art commune we met a dog who fell madly in love with Jen, and we enjoyed some homemade honey rakia, a traditional Balkan spirit. (We may have also bought a couple of bottles to bring home.) Golubac Fortress is in the process of being restored. One of the first things they did was reroute the highway so that it no longer goes through the castle gates. We got there fairly late, and it was too dark to scale the rocky interior and walk along the walls, but we did climb a few of the towers.

In Belgrade we walked around in the rain, and had some delicious treats at the Hotel Moskva. Belgrade’s trams are fairly old, but their heaters really mean it, so we got nice and toasty on our way to the incredibly ornate Church of Saint Sava.

Karl Malden in Belgrade, border crossing, treats at the Hotel Moskva

 

Golubac Fortress, Church of St Sava, the face of Decebalus, view of the Danube and Romania

Our travels continue next week!

Worth the Wait Part 2: Bulgaria

After Romania, we were off to Bulgaria. We’ve been trying to learn Russian for a while now, and our knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet came it quite handy on this whole trip.

Entering Bulgaria

As you can tell from the architecture, the Soviet Union left their thumbprints all over the region.

Our guide insisted that Bulgarian yogurt is the best in the world, but we were more impressed with the rose liqueur. There was also some rose brandy, which was hella intense, but it was the liqueur that we bought to bring home. We think it’ll be great over ice cream.

Obviously the USSR isn’t responsible for the awesome Wile E Coyote landscape.

More next week!