In a past column, I wrote about my journals. All 80 or more of them!

     As I write a certain day’s entry, I’ll maybe realize that this might be a story. Or in listening to a conversation … what if? (My two favorite words!).

     Well, it was a bright and beautiful sunny afternoon a few years ago, as opposed to “It was a dark and stormy night,” from Madeleine L’Engle’s book A Wrinkle in Time.

     I was the only one home. We still owned the grocery store and I had the afternoon off. The kids were either at work or with a friend.

     Since it was such a beautiful afternoon, I wanted to be outside.

     But here’s the hitch. I’m an introvert. I didn’t want anyone to see what I might be doing. I know. Part of the weirdness.

     So I hid in the garage, opened the overhead garage door, and a sweet breeze swept in. I plunked my lawn chair down behind a stack of boxes that I hadn’t gone through since our recent move, and placed my jar of iced tea on the running board of our 1930 Model A that lived there in the garage.

     I sat on the chair with my laptop on my … lap.

     The words poured out. I had never written fiction before. Just those journals.

     That was when Running, my first short story was born. That was my first anything: books, articles, anything!

     It was published in 2012 in a magazine called Splickety and it will be included in a short story collection in 2026. That was the beginning of over fifty short stories.

     I think writing short stories was how God taught me to write.

     I’d see an object—maybe a black banana on the counter waiting for its final resting place in the trash—and use that as a writing prompt. I’d write the story of whatever came to mind. I learned to create a sort of story arc.

     Do you think I would have plunked down in the garage and written that short story if I hadn’t paid attention to those blinks that God gave me? Pay attention.

     Soon some of the short stories began to fit together … into novels?