Being a writer, people are always asking me, “Where do you get your material from?”

As a human being I always think, “How can you not see the story material all around you?”

Take a walk in the woods. Walk along a seashore. Look up at the sky. Literally.

Talk to people.

Pay attention.

And then make connections. Stories are all about connections.

Personalize the tale.

And then leave people hanging a little bit, before you give them more.

A quick story for you:

When my youngest daughter was about two and a half, we went for a walk in the neighborhood one evening. As we were walking, the little peanut looked up into the sky and froze. Her eyes grew big and her mouth quivered. She pointed at the bright crescent moon that had just risen over the mountain and whispered, “Mommy. The moon is bwoken!”

She had never before noticed a crescent moon. To her little eyes the moon was always full. Mommy, the moon is broken, became a family mantra. We look at the sky for a broken moon all the time now. It’s become a family story.

Last night, I was up late writing and doing laundry. I happened to go outside around midnight to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer. I looked up at the sky through the skylight of our covered lanai and WOW! there was something really wrong with the moon.

I blinked. Holy crap! The moon was actually broken!

I walked out from under our covered lanai and blinked and looked again. It was seriously broken.

I checked my pulse, I blinked again. Nope. Still broken.

My older daughter had her light still on in her room and so I called her. “Can you please come and look? I think the moon is seriously broken.” I smiled sheepishly.

“Ha!” she laughed, but came and looked anyway.

“What is that?” She asked when she saw the big chunk of missing moon. “Look it up! Seriously. Look it up. That’s not right!”

So we looked it up and sure enough we were witnessing a partial lunar eclipse. My son woke up in the ensuing oohing and awing and the three of us sat there for almost an hour watching the earth’s shadow “break” (haha)  across the moon.

While looking up the lunar eclipse of yesterday, we also came across a very, very rare celestial event that is going to happen here on the Islands tomorrow.

A very, very rare celestial event. It happens in pairs and has only happened (in pairs) four times in modern history and won’t happen again until the year 2117, when we’ll all be dead and not able to see it again.

More on that tomorrow.

So.

There.

I just told you a story about how to find stories. Everywhere. Every day.

You look up. You look around. You pay attention. You personalize. And you make connections.

And then you always have more to tell...

You should always have more to tell....