These are stories from personal experience with a whole lot of imagination added. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of occurrences happen every day, every minute, and there is a short story hidden in each one. If lucky one can see that hidden short story, imagine how it could happen differently, take a note or two (I almost always have a tiny notebook and pen on me, and if I don’t I’ll take a napkin, a piece of newspaper, even my hand to write on, and I’ll attempt to borrow a pen from anyone who’s near me from an elegant-looking lady to the scariest-looking guy you can imagine-I’ve even been known to buy a pen; I must write down that note or two!) and then, on the way home, I’ll scribble more on whatever is handy, and when I get home, I’ll drop every other household chore-including eating-until I’ve gotten those first thoughts safely stored on my hard drive. It used to be harder: I’d have to write everything down by hand and then get to the manual typewriter (In those days I could write by hand faster than I could type.) But once those basic notes are down the fingers on the keyboard and the characters on the screen take over. I just try to keep up.
