The proposal

Hi everyone! First of all, I wanted to wish you all a very belated Happy New Year 2016! I hope 2016 will be everything you wish it to be and that it’s filled with happiness, love, laughter, good health, success and friendship…

As you’ve probably noticed (or not 🙂 ), I wasn’t very present, if at all, on the internet over the Christmas holidays because we went to Australia to spend Christmas with my wonderful family in Perth. I have to say that I’m in total awe of all those of you who managed to keep writing your blogs and posts all through the holidays – I just don’t know how you do it!

Although I didn’t get any writing done whatsoever during our trip, it was nevertheless inspiring in lots of ways. First of all, I realised that I was an ideal muse for any scatter-brained, typically ‘blonde’ female characters!!

Yep, from almost missing the plane because we just didn’t hear them calling our flight, to going to the supermarket and taking a man’s shopping bag by error and not realising until he caught up with me near my car, to wearing my t-shirt inside out, to putting petrol instead of diesel in my dad’s car and having to get it towed out of the petrol station (by a huge tow truck too)… and that’s only the half of it!

But over and above my air-headedness, there were just so many everyday situations that served as inspiration – it was just fascinating to people watch and imagine all the stories I could make up about each person, couple, family. One example was quite fun and along the lines of my chicklit/romcom genre…

One afternoon we went to Castle Rock, a beautiful place in the south west, for a sundowner. When we arrived, a girl in her late twenties approached us and asked us (very nicely) if we could avoid going too far down the beach as there was going to be a wedding proposal happening there soon! How exciting! So we sat on the beach and couldn’t help keeping a lookout for the happy couple, and finally, about half an hour later, they showed up. We knew straight away that it was them because the girl looked super relaxed and the guy – super tense! It was actually a laugh watching them knowing what was about to happen!

Anyway, they headed behind a bunch of rocks in a little cove and we were thrilled because we could still see them from where we were 🙂 – (yes, of course we watched them!!). We didn’t have to wait long – the guy was soon down on one knee and before we could even say ‘so is she, or isn’t she?’, she had jumped into his arms. We oohed and aahed from a distance and found the whole thing very romantic.

And then – out of the blue – comes a great potential cliff-hanger moment for someone with a super active imagination like mine! Yep, this guy suddenly starts sprinting down the beach in their direction, looking like he was on a mission!

Needless to say that my creative jujus went into overdrive! There were so many potential scenarios to make up using just that one little moment… and it struck me that life, in itself, is an inspiration and everywhere you are or look there’s something to draw on for a story.

So next time you’re out of ideas, go and sit down in a park or on the beach or in a pub and watch the world go by… you’ll find inspiration in ways you never imagined.

As for me, although I haven’t written at all for over a month, I’ve stored a lot of great ideas in the back of my mind for when I do get back down to it. I’m really hoping that I will now find the time to do just that – and hopefully this blog post is my first step 🙂

That’s all for today, but I’m really looking forward to sharing great things with you this year and I really hope to hear back from a lot of you throughout the year so that I can get to know you all too 🙂

A bientôt!

P.S. For the record, the guy didn’t actually go up to the couple and we didn’t see him again!! So I guess we’ll never know where he was rushing to 🙂 🙂

Thanks for reading! To return to the FICTION WRITERS BLOG HOP on Julie Valerie’s website, click here: http://www.julievalerie.com/fiction-writers-blog-hop-feb-2016

And if you’re looking for an Australian novel to read, have a look at a few suggestions from my recent post Looking for a book to read this weekend? Fairway to Heaven is actually set in a coastal town not far from Castle Rock!

 

 

 

 

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