Inspiration/Butt Glue

I believe the number one question asked by readers is, “Where do you get your ideas, or What is your inspiration?”

When I started writing it was just something I did to entertain myself. My husband kept saying I should share that entertainment with the world. I’ve never been a flamboyant, “put yourself out there” kind of person, so I just ignored him. As I came nearer to finishing my first manuscript, I began to share it with a few close friends. They loved it, and in turn, urged me to “do something with it”.
My Beau started researching publishers and writer’s groups. He put me on to The Sunshine State Romance Authors, Inc., a local chapter of Romance Writers of America, and the rest is history. They have since disbanded, but they were a wonderful group of talented, knowledgeable women who took me in and set my feet on the path to fulfillment. Watching them succeed gave me energy and hope. They truly made me feel a part of this crazy, wistful, often ditzy world of writing.
They also introduced me to something called butt glue. A little ‘gift’ they would share with a different someone at each month’s meeting. This story is about how I came to know, and love, butt glue.

I knew it had to happen, sooner or later, and I had been dreading it for some time. I mean, I had been lucky and managed to dodge this thing for over a year!
Since it was inevitable, I thought, why not just get it over with; so, at one of the meetings I volunteered for the Butt Glue.

What? You’ve never heard of the infamous butt-glue? Well, it was invented by a really devious woman, one Jennifer Taylor. A member of a group of writers who are known to have knowledge of things like lust and hope, mayhem and laughter, murder and romance, not necessarily in that order or grouping. And the sole purpose of this invention was to put one’s butt in a chair (or on a stool, or even on a chaise at poolside, so I’ve heard) and keep you there until you have birthed and recorded words. Lots and lots of words. It was a small bottle of Elmer’s that we passed from one writer to another at each meeting. Mind you, it was purely symbolical, not to be actually spread on a seat! And I still believe Jennifer should have patented her idea!

Well, I had been a little short on words lately (that’s my husband you hear choking in the background, as he rolls on the floor with tears streaming from his laughing eyes), so I did what any savvy writer would do. I volunteered for the Butt Glue.

I marched into the office one morning, firmly planted that little white bottle down beside my keyboard and waited. And waited. And waited.

Nothing. And believe me, I recognize nothing when I see it staring back at me from that blinding white page.

I became so disillusioned by the nothingness of it all, that I lowered my head to the desktop and waited for tears.

Suddenly I felt a firm grip on my wrist and the sensation of air, first softly stirring my hair, then rushing by so fast that it began to roar. I opened my eyes and found nothing but blackness and what might have been stars. Did I mention that I am deathly afraid of heights? So, I clamped those eyes of mine firmly closed and was just about to scream, when I became aware of the smell of salt air. The wind had slowed and was now playing with my long, wavy, copper tresses. What?!
I opened my eyes and found myself standing on a cliff, staring out over Sinclair Bay and behind me was the Ackergill Tower, standing majestically against the Caithness countryside. It was coming on dusk and the Northern Lights had begun to infuse the skies over Scotland with pale greens and lavenders. I turned at the sound of pounding hooves, only to see a man of magnificent proportions wrapped in nothing but a Tartan plaid. He brought the horse to a sliding halt, vaulted off and dropped to one knee in front of me. Good Lord, what a man! Eyes like polished steel, arms that had been burnished by the sun and rippled with bands of muscles, and ebony hair that set off a jawline of granite. He took my hand, looked deeply into my eyes, and said, “Och, ye bonny lass, where ha’ ye been all me life?”

At least that’s what it sounded like to me. I can’t be sure because the wind in that darn tunnel had started roaring again; my feet left the ground and all I could see was that bottle of glue pulling me into the tunnel.

When I opened my eyes again, it was to see the evening sun setting behind a wall of granite and snow topped mountains. I was standing on the front porch of a roughly-hewn log cabin, holding a metal bar in my hand and looking at a triangular dinner-bell. Unsure of what might happen, I swallowed hard and used the bar to “ring” the bell. I gave it a good hearty ring, then waited for the outcome.
I saw movement near the barn. I watched as a tall, lean but muscular and shirtless cowboy rounded the corner, wiping sweat with the bandana he removed from his neck.

As he got closer, I could see those ice-blue eyes with lines at the corners from squinting in the Colorado sun. I could see the cording across that broad chest, leading down to his narrowed waist. Those piercing eyes met mine and I lost all coherent thought. My breath was coming in short gasps. Then he spoke in a voice that rumbled up out of that sweat wet chest. “Woman, you can put supper back in the oven. Right now, all I want is a bath and you.”

I could feel a tug at my shoulder and a sharp pain across the back of my neck. I raised my head and wiped the drool from the side of my mouth as my husband said, “You silly goose, if you need a nap, go stretch out in the recliner.”

I was confused. I looked around, and the only thing I saw that registered in my sleep-fogged brain was that darn bottle of butt glue. And then in a flash of blinding light, well okay, when my husband turned on the overhead light in the office, things became clear.

I saw the lambs-wool, tartan-plaid throw, that I won at the on-line “Rogues” party from the lovely Grace Burrowes, folded neatly on the corner of my desk. On top of it lay the old, but much loved, arrowhead that my grandson brought back from a camping trip near Denver.

I looked back at the bottle of butt glue and knew the truth. The glue works in a different way for each of us. My need was for inspiration. The glue had taken some of the many “themes” of inspiration that were right under my nose and “cemented” them in my unconscious mind.
My work-in-progress still needs words, but my notebook of “possibilities” is bulging with new ideas!
Thanks, Butt Glue, and may you do for others what you’ve done for me.

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