LR Gray's Writing Space

Describe my work space to the readers

As a mother, grandma and commercial driver my work space for the most part is where ever I can find a quiet spot. On most occasions when they were sleep or gone I would get to the kitchen table, my favor chair in the living room and even sometimes my bedroom and just clear my mind of everything except the story I am focused on.

What is your typical writing day like?

Since I have started driving OTR again, my typical writing days are short and usually during my 12hr down time before sleeping for 8hrs. These times could be in the middle of the day, early morning, late evening and sometimes right before midnight.

Where do you receive inspiration from?

For me, anything can inspire me to write. One of my favorite inspiring moments was a few years back. My sons, “Andrew and James” and I had just moved into our first San Antonio apartment. The apartment was still bare and unfurnished.

So we were spending a lot of time eating in front of the living room fireplace, sitting on tossed pillows or out on the balcony overlooking a creek running through the back yard.  But this particular night out of the calm clear blue sky a big bad thunderstorm had crept up on us, knocking out all the power on our street, forcing us to eat in the absolute pitch dark and unwanted serious lightning flashing. We managed somehow to get through dinner. But the boys were afraid to go to their bedroom to sleep. So we decided to sleep right where we were in the living room with the tossed pillows and blankets. 

The thunderstorm was getting closer and closer so the lightning flashed more and more as well as brighter, bigger and longer. So I slightly closed the vertical blinds as we laid there still unable to sleep. Seeing just how afraid they were, I told the boys to make up a story. 

At first they were still afraid, then after a while they began to look around the room at the shadows of rain, the trees and the vertical blinds on the wall casted by the lightning flashing. From that moment they imagined themselves living in a rainforest in a tree house.

Where a sloth hung outside the bedroom window and birds were flying in the distance. I told them they had to come up with a name for themselves.  They said they only saw one child but could not figure out what to call the child. So after looking around the empty room again there was nothing but pillows. So from the pillows the child’s name was born. His name would be Pillar.

What’s the most important writing advice you ever received?

I once read never write your book one day and submit it the next. Instead write a bit each day as you are inspired. When you have finished put it away and come back to it a week or two later.

Who inspires you as a writer?

If I had to give credit to someone it would not be a writer but an artist: William Thomas Kinkade III. No particular writer inspires me as much as mothers and grandmothers who are full time parents writing about life. But Thomas Kinkade work of art speaks so much to me.

How do you get ideas for your books?

Looking at life and its many concerns from the eyes of a child fills us all with many questions.

Are you predominantly a children’s book writer?

No.

Will you ever branch out into other kinds of writing?

Yes