Ideas & Inspiration

Deep Blue is actually something I've been trying to write for more than 10 years, but, until recently, I was never really able to come up with anything fully-formed. Like all stories, it started out as just a seed of an idea: A man falls in love with a woman, but she disappears at sea. Each night he thinks he hears her calling to him from out beyond the breakers, but can't get to her. Just a seed of an idea. The middle of a story. A brief sound bite. I'd try to write it, but hit a wall trying to figure out the beginning of the story: How did the man and woman meet? What were they to each other? How does she end up at sea? Or I didn't know what happened after: Did the pair ever get happily reunited? End up in a Romeo-and-Juliet situation? What? It was an intriguing (and persistent) idea, but it wasn't a story.

Then, last summer, inspiration struck! My husband and I were on our way to a Korean restaurant* almost an hour away and, while enroute, we played The Story Game. The Story Game goes like this: One of us will start a story and, when we reach a turning point, pass it to the other. Sometimes these stories turn out to be really awesome epic tales. Other times they fizzle out. It was within one of these stories (a silly one about a manatee who goes on a great quest to find a magical seaweed that will save his sick girlfriend manatee) that I found the inspiration that would tie my decade-old idea to something solid and expandable. Something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Of course a lot about both ideas (the seaweed story and the woman at sea) got changed and rearranged quite a bit in the process, but I was happy to finally incorporate the old idea into something and have it fit perfectly. In fact, I think that idea was waiting for me to come up with Deep Blue. I can't imagine it any other way.

*p.s. In case you're wondering, the restaurant was awesome! Best Bulgogi I've ever eaten and unlimited kimchi (yum!)