Invite the unexpected into your life.

To be a writer, invite the unexpected into your life. If you always go to the same coffee shop to write, go to a different coffee shop sometimes. If you always go somewhere the same way, go a different way sometimes.

Join different networking groups where you will meet people you normally wouldn't. Sign up with a temporary help company where you get put in different situations. Drive a cab where you meet different people.

If you sit in your room and write all day, every day, and you will grow stale, and your writing will rot. It's the unexpected that gives birth to fiction.

Consider Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. He's a doctor from Indiapolis, played by Jimmy Stewart. He and his wife, a singer played by (surprise) Doris Day, are in a bazaar one morning and see a man stabbed in the back. Stewart rushes forward to help the man who whispers something in his ear. That kick-starts the action. Other things are going on, of course.

If Jimmy and Doris hadn't been in the bazaar that day, no story really.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.