Well, People Ask

Written By Joe Smolen

Where do I get story inspiration?

Out of a hat sometimes, other times I am struck by some random thing somebody does that I think reveals a deep emotion in them and I can't forget them and it inspires a story. For instance, maybe I am at a street fair and I realize I am watching a child swindling adults and I have to create a little girl who gets even with him because the kid swindles her dad. Then there are things I read that stick in my imagination like a harpoon and a story heals around the puncture. I have met individuals, only for an instant, whose personas grabbed me so strongly that, I suppose, because I realize I can never know them, I compulsively begin to imagine their lives. 🤪

Joe Smolen

Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.

https://joecsmolen.com
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