Jim Wren
Jim Wren asked Talmadge Walker:

Talmadge, the obvious question from my perspective, just how do you make the concrete move from "idea" to finalized work? I mean. . ., you seem to have such a finger on your own creative response. But how does a person get the story out of himself/herself. Enemas, a quick finger down the throat, of the Roman trick of a feather and a vomitorium aside, how do I get my first work onto paper?

Talmadge Walker Jim, This is going to sound like a copout, but there's no set way. I've had stories (pretty good ones, like Gilead in the Misadventures collection) that I've bounced around in my head for years before putting them down on paper, while others are just a sudden inspiration (best one along that line is Christmas Eve off Main Street, currently available on kindle only but I'll be putting it in a collection soon for paperback). The novella I'm about to put out on kindle (The Pensioner) developed out of some family history I was researching a few years back, but I was prompted to write it now because of a couple of totally unrelated items recently in the news (a NC woman who was the last surviving person in the state to receive a pension, and the reaction to the Bergdahl prisoner swap). And once I start writing some of the stories seem to take a life of their own. I do have a preference for full-circle type endings.

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