“I can get an idea from toilet paper!” I shouted after a writing friend asked me where my inspiration came from.

He laughed.

I was serious. Writers have a huge imagination and can be anywhere when an idea strikes, even the bathroom. It can come from a person, a place, or the oddest of objects. If you feel you’ve got writers block and can’t think of anything, maybe you are trying too hard. Relax and let your mind sink to levels from grade school. Think of stupid things and laugh about them. Do goofy things. Heck, cover yourself with chocolate syrup and roll around in your grass after freshly cut. You can call yourself the Grass Cutter Monster. I don’t care! Eventually, something has to emerge from your nonsense. You’re a writer, dang it!

Okay, maybe you don’t have to go to extremes. But you do need to stop being inhibited by your educated adult brain that insists on telling you when something isn’t practical. Let’s go back to toilet paper. My linear thinking brain says no one wants to hear about white fluffy stuff that wipes fecal matter off their butts. I’m a writer of paranormal stories and fluffiness doesn’t fit into them very well. Or…can it?

“Prove it,” my friend challenged.

I blurted this out: It is family day down at the local toilet paper factory. Little Johnny brought his good luck rock he claims fell from the sky when he was camping last week. His dad pulls him aside to demand the rock be put into his pocket because Johnny is embarrassing him by claiming the rock came from outer space. In an argumentative struggle, the rock accidentally falls into the pulper and breaks. Microscopic parasites, resistant to high heat levels, are released and get woven into the toilet paper. Upon contact with human skin, the parasites enter through their pores and rapidly drink their blood. People shrivel to bone and stiff corpses turn up around the country. Only little Johnny and his dad suspect the reasoning.

I can go on with a full blown novel from there. I just need to determine how the parasites are going to continue spreading and how they will ultimately be stopped. But the bottom line, I took the challenge because I didn’t laugh myself out of the “fluff” idea.

Now it’s your turn! Write away folks! And yes…the novel FLUFF may be coming your way soon!

P.D. Pabst

Writer of YA Fiction and Blogger