Read Everything. Write Everything.

I’m reading right now a little book that, in the wider publishing world, would probably never have gone to print.

Not that it’s bad. It’s entertaining. And educational.

But the storytelling therein isn’t a slick or polished as traditional publishing would have it be. So it wouldn’t be a go. It’s the kind of book some of the locals pick up and read because they or a family member or relative may be mentioned in it, but it might lack a wider audience.

Which is wrong. So wrong.

Because everything ought to be written down.

And even if the things written down aren’t as polished as they could be in the hands of another writer, what is preserved could be the germ of an idea. A springboard for a different kind of story. Or a mine for the little details that, say, a big-city writer might not know about small-town life. Or vice-versa.

The book in question is “Life Among the Lava Beds,” by Leonard Stephenson. I picked it up at a local thrift store because a quick glance showed me it was by a semi-local author (I live about two hours north of its setting, lava Hot Springs, Idaho) and I love to read bits by local authors. And in what pages I’ve read I can see a genesis of other Idaho writers, notably Patrick F. McManus, who made a great career retelling stories and exaggerations about his childhood. Stephenson, with a bit more practice and polish, could be southern Idaho’s analog to one of Idaho’s more famous and folksy writers. (The biggest flaw I can see is that there’s a lot of telling, but only a modicum of showing in Stephenson’s stories. With a bit more flair for presentation and a bigger poetic license, he could take his stories a lot farther.)

I’ve got settings and story ideas that could go somewhere. Except I don’t know where to take them. Looking at what authors like Stephenson write can open windows into a different world, one my characters could populate.

And I’m not talking about outright literary theft. That would be dishonest, and a disservice to this author. But I am talking about inspiration and ideas. What kinds of mischief could my characters get up to? So far, I’ve read about Stepehson’s experiences as an eight-year-old on a cattle drive, or being bored to tears helping harvest raspberries. Taken the general idea – cattle drives and berry-picking – gives my characters places to play and expand. Had Stepehnson not written them, and had I not been lucky enough to find his little book, I might not have thought of such ideas.

Is this theft? No. Because if drawing inspiration from other writers is theft, then Mr. Stephenson had better be ready to hear from a lot of other writers who wrote of cattle drives and berry-picking before him. Inspiration is drawing on the bigger ideas or themes. Theft is taking the little details.

It’s quite possible I’ll never be published. But maybe some writer will look at a useless blog posting of mine and find inspiration. That would be neat.