Finding Stories

So you all know that I make these cookies to sell, right? And there's a certain kind of flour (among other things) that goes into them that makes them look like this.

Although the flour is available at Costco, the past two weeks it has been unavailable. Apparently, some "company" has been coming in and buying  pallets of it as soon as it's delivered and leaving the shelves bare until the next shipment arrives. And not just one Costco, but every single one in the Salt Lake Area--about 8 or 9 stores. That is a whole lot of flour!

So I went to the mill that supplies the flour and asked them if I could buy the 25 lb. bags there. "No, we are all sold out," the clerk said. I told her about my Costco experience. I said, "I'd like to know who is doing this and what they are doing with all that flour."

She said, "Well, I'd like to know what the man's doing with all the flour he bought the other day. This guy comes in and buys an entire pallet of whole wheat flour. That's a lot. It's like 90 bags. And whole wheat flour doesn't keep that well, so why does he want so much?"

When I told my husband about all this, he said, "Maybe someone  is stockpiling it. Wonder what the winter wheat crop has been?" He researches it on the internet and learns that the winter wheat crop was bountiful. He also learns that Russia had a plentiful wheat crop as well and is trying to import it to the United States.

"Aha!!"  I exclaim. "That's it! It's the Russian Mafia, trying to create a demand by purchasing massive amounts of flour throughout the U.S. and creating a false shortage."

Well, anyway, there's the story.  Stories are everywhere, if you pay attention and connect the dots. Whether they intrigue you enough to write about them is another matter. Although it's fun to imagine the scenario about the Russian Mafia, I don't want to write about it. It's not really my genre. But if anyone else does, feel free!

How Virginia Woolf Became a Novelist

But to tell you my story-- it is a simple one. You have only got to figure to yourselves a girl in a bedroom with a pen in her hand. She had only to move that pen from left to right--from ten o'clock to one. Then it occurred to her to do what is simple and cheap enough after all--to slip a few of those pages into an envelope, fix a penny stamp in the corner, and drop the envelope into the red box at the corner. It was then that I became a journalist; and my effort was rewarded on the first day of the following month--a very glorious day it was for me--by a letter from an editor containing a cheque for one pound ten shillings and sixpence. But to show you how little I deserve to be called a professional woman, how little I know of the struggles and difficulties of such lives, I have to admit that instead of spending that sum upon bread and butter, rent, shoes and stockings, or butcher's bills, I went out and bought a cat--a beautiful cat, a Persian cat, which very soon involved me with bitter disputes with my neighbors.

Then I grew ambitious. A Persian cat is all very well, I said; but a Persian cat is not enough. I must have a motor-car. And it was thus that I became a novelist--for it is a very strange thing that people will give you a motor-car if you will tell them a story. It is a still stranger thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. (from Professions for Women by Virginia Woolf)

So fast forward to today's writer who does pretty much the same thing:

Write

Finish something

Submit it

Be grateful (hopefully) when someone actually pays money to read our work.

That's the best part. Not so much the money, since it's never enough anyway, but to know that people have paid money for your book. And to recognize, with gratitude, that "there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories."

Don't you love little tales like this that make it all sound so easy? Well, it may not be easy but it is simple. Write, finish, submit, and be grateful for every small success!

P.S. I am grateful for the prizes I've won lately on blogs, and here's another one I'm entering over at Lola's blog Sharp Pen Dull Sword Go check it out!