Craft/Writing Prompt--Using a Photo as a Trigger

Forgive me for being a little out-of-sync today. It feels like a Monday because I live in Massachusetts and we celebrated Patriots' Day yesterday, the commemoration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and Paul Revere's ride. It's also the day the Boston Marathon is run, about which I'll blog later in the week.

Given that I've mistaken today for a Monday, here's a note on craft:

I keep a folder in which I store images that intrigue me, that lead me to ask "What's the story here?"

I tear them out of newspapers and magazines, scan them from family photo albums. Sometimes they sit in the folder for awhile, but if the image is compelling enough I find myself continuing to go back to it until I've figured out what it's trying to tell me.

It was just such an image that was the seed for my novella, "A Daughter's Journey." The photo, a portrait of a young woman reporter during the Vietnam War, became the inspiration for Mel Ames.

Start your own collection. And in the meantime, take a stab at creating a story from the photo above.