Strange friends, and even stranger relatives

I should never have said I wanted to kill off a character in my last post. I'm getting too many suggestions. But it's all good. Which is very strange.

But then, the life of a writer is strange. We are always creating stories in our minds. Gathering fodder from daily life. And everything is fodder.

For instance, an acquaintance on one of my many loops was recently at a funeral for a close relative. While she was in the midst of her own mourning, she was also studying the others there - cataloging their emotions, how they looked, how they acted, what they said. She commented on the loop about how this was all so very strange, and yet, we all understood instantly what she was talking about. Somewhere down the road, she will probably use some of that in a book somewhere.

We writers gather things - bits of life - and store them. The better (or worse, depending on what you're writing) bits become parts of scenes in stories, poems and books. The way sunlight sparkles on ice hanging from a tree becomes a poem about winter. A friend's reaction in a funeral becomes a character in a mystery story. The way someone handles numbers and data with untoward ease becomes an android in a science fiction story. Everything is fuel for our imagination.

Including friends and family who give me ideas on how to kill off a character. ;)