The Harder I Work, the Luckier I Get

By Martha Reed

In my last blog, I talked about research. In this one, I’m going to talk about luck.

Some folks might call it coincidence, but I’ve noticed that when I start to work toward a creative goal, if I keep my focus on it, odd things happen. There was a huge fire in my mystery novel, and as I wrote the chapter I was having trouble describing what it looked like, because I’d never actually seen, up close, a really big fire. Giving up, I went for a walk and stopped at my sister’s house. We sat on her back deck for a good five minutes before we saw the smoke – the neighborhood Presbyterian church was on fire and everyone ran down to watch our volunteer firefighters in action. And there it was, my first big fire.

Today it happened again. I’m working on a story about retired circus people, and I’ve done a bit of thinking about where they would live and what a, say, retired trapeze artist would do for fun after his knees gave out. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from an old friend who invited me to Sarasota, Florida at the end of the month to help her use up her timeshare. Sarasota Florida, the winter home of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus.

Things that make you go hummm. My sister says I should write a story about hitting the Pennsylvania lottery and then play those numbers.

How about it? Any odd creative coincidences out there?