Eva Pasco's Blog - Posts Tagged "catalyst"

Whatever your intellectual pursuit or artistic flair, a catalyst must have ignited the fire that burns within—a steady flame or raging inferno, depending on the nature of your beast.

What’s your fire starter?

While there was never a conscious decision on my part to pursue the path of a writer, I developed a fascination with words and turns of phrase when I was a toddler, sitting on my mother’s lap while she read stories to me. One of my favorites—the English fairy tale, “Teeny Tiny”: “Once upon a time there was a teeny-tiny woman who lived in a teeny-tiny house in a teeny-tiny village. Now, one day, this teeny-tiny woman put on her teeny-tiny bonnet, and went out of her teeny-tiny house to take a teeny-tiny walk …”

My mother also taught me to become a proficient typist by the age of nine on my girly-pink Tom Thumb typewriter.

The catalyst for writing my first story occurred when I was twelve years old. A malfunction in the electrical wiring caused our doorbell to ring automatically. This prompted me to compose, “The Mystery of the Midnight Doorbell,” a short story involving secret codes and a smuggling ring.

My overactive imagination soon sparked several mysteries and serial spy thrillers.

In high school, I wrote a romance novella which earned its place on a library shelf. The rigors of college, and the demands placed on a teaching career in elementary education, shelved further creative writing endeavors until I retired from the profession.

With time on my hands, midlife restlessness rekindled my dormant imagination and passion for writing. However, a writer needs more than an innate fire to develop a story in the guise of a novel…

To be continued: Inspiration…