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The Writing Process

After all these years, I’m ready to pull back the curtain

Tommy Paley
14 min readSep 24, 2021
Photo by Rob Laughter on Unsplash

So, I often get asked how I come up with the ideas I write about.

Good question!

After a moment of thinking about grizzly bears followed by eating a large chocolate chip cookie followed by some planking, I decided to think more about how I write what I write. I mean I could choose any topic, how do I choose the ones I choose? Is it totally random? Am I attempting to put off senility? Do I owe an ominous gangster lots of money? Just for once, could the gangster owe me money and could I please be the ominous one for a while? Did I take too many “crazy” pills?

The truth is that is how my brain works. I know, I am as confused and surprised as the next guy (that guy is sitting next to me at the library and keeps inching further away every time I look at him, lean in and snicker). You would think that I would write either ultra-boring, predictably banal stories about humankind’s predicament or super-cliched, achingly obvious stories about boy meets girl, girl is actually a wolf in disguise, girl wolf almost eats boy even going as far as creating a fabulous five course boy-influenced menu, only to fall head over heels in love with the boy, before the yawn-inducing ending where they kiss and the boy is magically freed from the evil spell and he…

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Tommy Paley
Tommy Paley

Written by Tommy Paley

I write creative non-fiction, humorous and random short stories, unique and tasty recipes and fiction involving odd and funny relationships. I also love cheese.

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