By Rebecca Gernon

I saw a print ad for Jaguar, a car far beyond my price range. The ad states: You are out of excuses. In other words, buy this car!

This applies to your writing. You will never be published if you don’t write. Are you a wannabe writer with pencils, pens, paper, and a computer sitting there waiting for you to use them? Do you take your profession seriously? Serious writers get published. Wannabees attend conferences, join writing groups, and read books about writing, but they don’t WRITE!

If you are reading this, get ready to write. Everyday events occur in your life that can be written about. Life is a puzzle, write about each piece.

My piece for today: Unexplained Traffic

I need to drive the longest bridge over water in the world, (The 24-mile Causeway Bridge across Lake Ponchartrain) to get from the Northshore to New Orleans. Two lanes go north and another two lanes go south. There are 7 places where a driver may cross from one side to the other, but that is for emergency use only. The speed limit is 65 MPH.

I’m zooming along, a few miles over the limit, 15 miles into my drive listening to Life Songs radio when the car in front of me brakes. Soon I am engulfed in a ribbon of unmoving cars. There are no flashing lights ahead, nothing to cause traffic to halt. Five minutes later, we are moving again. And four miles later the same traffic halt occurs. Again no explanation. We are all hares in the race across the bridge. Meanwhile, the tortoises going to the Northshore are speeding by on the other side of the road.

Not very interesting event, but I wrote something. I can jazz it up by imagining what might have caused the delay. Perhaps an alligator fell out of someone’s pick up. This actually happened once and caused a traffic jam. Could be the beginning of a mystery, insert a couple of aliens, and you have the beginning of a sci-fi story.  Have a passenger in your car ready to give birth and a handsome doctor stops to assist. Flesh this out into a romance story.

People who have not played golf for six years would not say, I am a golfer.” Instead, if asked they might say, “I used to play.” The same goes for fishing, bowling and writing. If you are not writing, you are not a writer. Don’t be a wannabe…..BE a writer, WRITE!