Overheard, But Not Remembered

“Have you overheard a conversation and added it in some way to a story?”

Apparently, this was a suggestion of mine and again, one that I wish I had made notations about when I thought it up. I cannot think of one overheard conversation which inspired a story to me.

I actually do have a line I overheard which I put down, thinking that it SHOULD inspire a story, but it has not, not yet anyway. Watch, as soon as I post this, I will overhear people talking and be inspired for my best piece yet!

What I HAVE been inspired by have been other people’s accounts of their experiences: a friend who survived birth when her twin did not, a friend who was called up on stage to assist in a magic show, friend’s family on an island. More of my writing is inspired by things in my life, although I have taken the ball and run in another direction more often than not.

I have always been discreet, and my family secrets are not something that I have used in stories.

Until recently.

A story told to me by my mother about the Black Sheep of the family, another one that he, himself, told at our house years later, and a third one which a cousin was told about him by her mother, (which she recently related to me), I realized that they are all part of ONE story, and it’s a juicy one!

All of the people involved are long gone, and the names will be changed. Only the one cousin and I know all of it, if, indeed, anyone left who knows any of it at all. I think that the story just may be ‘put out there’ sometime soon.

But sorry; I wish that I knew what I had in mind for this week’s topic.

Hmmm, but I am missing a good story somewhere in my mind.

About a year ago I did overhear an apparently long-married couple in a doctor’s waiting room. To be honest, it was obvious that they wanted to be overheard. I got the impression that I knew all about these people with the little that was said

and I can’t seem to forget them.

They need to be in a story.

Probably not their own story, one based on them alone, but I think they will make good characters. I just don’t know where they would go right now, and I can’t see using what I heard them say.

Give me time.

I will probably smack myself in the forehead when I go to edit or continue a story and see that a line or so was from an overheard conversation, but any elude me now.

That’s my problem; I’ve got too many ideas, but ones that were overheard?  Not coming to me just now, unfortunately.