Smell

I want to start this installment by thanking everyone for their kind words and thoughts during my family tragedy. They definitely have helped me to move on...well, not completely move on , but you get what I mean. I thought I would use this time to talk about smell. Kind of strange in a way, but it's something we really don't think about when we are creating stories. Sure, we write about emotions and how we feel, but do we write about how things smell? I don't know about you, but I'm constantly smelling-- as I write this, I can smell my large German Shepherd as he sleeps at my feet. He's stinky and his breath is bad and sometimes he farts. He is almost 7 years old, so he doesn't have puppy breath anymore. But his smell is so distinct, I miss it when I go away. Okay, maybe this is a bit weird for some people. Let's try some other memory. There is a perfume I used to wear back in my mid-twenties. It was a mango smell that The Body Shoppe still sells. Whenever I smell that mango perfume, it takes me back to a time when I was in university and was partying waaayyyyyy too much. I'm transported to that time and place, and those feelings return once again:a mixture of sadness, loss and being lost, but also a moment of finding myself. Whether you are journaling or establishing characters in your story, smell can dig a little deeper into what is really going on inside.