First, for those who don’t follow me on Twitter or who may have missed it, life has gotten just a touch more distracted around here…or maybe less, actually.  Thursday the Taterboy and I made a (hot) hour long drive to meet the little girl on the left in the above picture.  I’ve been considering getting another pup for a while now and the time finally arrived.  Though there were two other dachshunds there when we arrived these two had eyes only for each other.  Tater made some requisite sniffs of the other two but it was the six month old girl that had his attention.  For nearly two hours these two played.  I took him with me to make sure they would get along, and boy was there no doubt that was going well!

Her previous owner(who found she was unfortunately allergic to dogs) had been calling the puppy “Itchy”.  Which, frankly, is just an awful name! But…she answered to it so the woman who was trying to rehome her continued to call her that.  Well, there was no way I was going to keep it.  Beyond it being just awful it’s just a little too close to the puttytat’s name, Idgy.  And, since my sweet puttytat answers when called, I just had terrible visions of puppy-cat chaos when they both came to whichever name was called.

Obviously, I brought the wee one home.  It took a few hours of being with her to get a sense of her personality; shy, quiet, playful but cuddly.  She also has an absence of black tipping on her fur down her spine, which translates into an almost red streak down her back.  Y’know…like a skunk stripe?  Well that got me thinking as I watched the Taterboy lick and kiss her and act all twitterpated.  What was the name of the girl skunk in Bambi that had Flower all smitten?

Unfortunately, she was never given a name, at least nothing more than Mrs. Skunk(Really, Wikipedia does have everything!)  However, the list of other fictional skunks were very helpful!  I started saying the girl names out loud and when I hit “Rosie” I knew I’d found the one.

Tater and Rosie are quite cute together.  He’s almost a different pup now that he has a companion and a part of me feels really bad for waiting so long.  But, if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found Rosie.

~*~

Now…on to what I was really going to blog about! 

 Inspiration comes to me in many ways but, usually, it’s with a sentence and a character or two.  After that I follow the thread, sometimes untangling, sometimes using that thread to weave, until I have a story.  Last week, though, I had something happen that’s a bit more rare.

Actually, maybe it isn’t all that rare.  Most of the time I’ve various threads blowing in the wind and I’ve just to grab one and start going.  Because of that the more elusive ones, the little berries of thought that might be coaxed into something larger, those end up being overlooked.

If the idea I’m tending now turns into something good I’m going to have to watch out for those little berries and not neglect them!

Earlier this week I lay in bed, trying to wind down for sleep, and tweeted that I was a happy Weaver after a few hours spent with my sweetheart.  One word served as my start.  Weaver.  Odd, considering I was simply referring to my last name, but that little berry plopped into my mind and I was off.  Isn’t there a weaver bird? Yes, there is…

Unlike my normal process of tugging the thread and being able to follow it to the end this was quite different.  This was, and still is, gardening.  I read a little on weaver birds and the idea, that little berry, was soon planted in my imagination.  The next day I read some more(like that Weaver birds are primarily an African bird and the males weave fantastic nests) and, knowing a new Three Word Wednesday prompt was up I checked the words.  I found Buffer, Transition, and Unity.  Now, I’ve been enjoying the variety of inspirations I’ve been experiencing with my writing prompts.  Most of them, in fact, are posted over at Swirling Currents because they aren’t erotic stories.

That planted idea sank roots with those words.  When I thought about writing about a bird my mind jumped to the riddle I imagine we’ve all heard.

If a bird and a fish fall in love, where would they live?

Now my idea-berry is pushing a sprout upwards.  What fish, I thought, would a weaver bird love?  Every bit of information I found while researching watered my idea, nourishing it.  It grew and as it did my characters emerged.  I won’t share too much more here, as I’m going to write it and post the story, so you’ll see soon enough.  But the process has been a new one for me, an enjoyable one, and I wanted to share it.

Do you find ideas coming to you in different ways?  Do you get set in a certain mode of seeking inspiration?  What do you do to shake it up?

 ~By the by, stop by the #WeekendWriter prompt for this week to shake up your process and try something new.  The combination of the prompts this week just begs for development! ~