Story Ideas from the Brain

It’s amazing to me how one day a writer like myself can be completely lost for ideas and then one phrase gets me improvising into my notebook. I also picked up a copy of Borges’ Collected Stories and he also calls them improvisations in the forward from the 1930’s. These little phrases or anecdotes we hear that trigger the fictive spaces to form up. 41JO0puzbmL__SL500_AA280_

The idea has to do with Relles and Lolo walking to Joe’s Grocery on the corner of Summit and Box Elder back in the day to pick up a little blue box for the Jefita. The boys didn’t know what it was until they were much older–had no idea what Kotex was. And then the line: ‘I was always afraid of one of my crew finding me walking home with that damn little blue box.’

Once I heard that I started to note take into my Moleskin and improvising pretty fast and furiously. I hope to have a draft of that short story or chapter in a few days.

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john paul jaramillo

John Paul Jaramillo’s debut story collection The House of Order was named a 2013 Int’l Latino Book Award Finalist, and his most recent work Little Mocos is now available from Twelve Winters Press. In 2013 Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature listed Jaramillo as one of its Top 10 New Latino Authors to Watch and Read. He is currently a professor of composition and literature at Lincoln Land College-Springfield, Illinois.

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