There’s No Place Like Home by Christina Lorenzen

For writers, the perfect story idea is their lifeblood. Oftentimes, writers are faced with two battles at the complete opposite ends. There’s the battle where one can’t seem to come up with a good idea. Similar to writer’s block, where the words just won’t come, those are the trying times when you just can’t come up with a good idea for your next story. It just seems like everything has been done before. Then there’s the battle of having too many ideas and you can’t decide which one to choose. Usually, most writers fear going with the wrong idea and spending countless days writing only to hit a wall. Too quickly that right idea is all wrong.

When you’re searching for the next great story idea to write, sometimes, like the old saying goes, ‘there’s no place like home’. Last night I was flipping through my writer’s notebook. I started keeping a writer’s notebook several years ago when I saw another author mention it on her blog. This small notebook fits in my purse and goes everywhere I go. You never know when you might come up with a spark of an idea, a great sentence or character. Chances are if you don’t write it down right away you won’t remember it when you want to. While thumbing through my notebook, I noticed some of my notes for my newest releases, Healings Seas and The Silvershell Beach Inn (to be released late August). Though my chicken scratch makes me wonder if I couldn’t have entered the medical field, I was able to make out something that stopped me in my tracks. I had written down two things – Grandma Dorothea’s favorite movie and Nana’s famous Canja soup. Those were both distinct things I remembered about two very special grandmothers in my family.

While many times we’re looking for the next one of a kind, unique, never been done before story, the stories that sometimes click are the ones closest to our hearts. Like Dorothy found out in the classic story, The Wizard of Oz, sometimes what we’re looking for is in our own backyards. When I remembered how much my husband’s  grandmother loved the movie the Titanic, an event that happened the year she was born, the idea for Healing Seas, my first historical romance, was born. When my cousin and I were reminiscing about summers on the beach and our grandmother’s Canja soup (a Portuguese dish) in Marion, Massachusetts, the idea for The Silvershell Beach Inn nearly wrote itself. Because these two stories were born from my own memories, the words flowed and there was no wall to hit. And because they came from my own life, I knew they had never been done before.

There really is no place like home. What sweet memories might make the perfect story for you to write? 

~~~~~~

Christina started writing as a young teen, jotting stories in wire ring composition notebooks. Her first typewriter made it faster to get all those stories out of her head.

Rapunzel’s Lighthouse is Christina’s sixth book. Her next release, The Silvershell Beach Inn, will be released August 2017 from Forget Me Not Romances. When she isn’t writing or reading, she can be found walking her dog, talking to her herd of cats and spending time with her family.