On Writing: Inspiration

What was I doing in a makeshift refugee shelter on the Ukrainian border? An elderly Ukrainian couple had just been huddling close to the heater on my left. A mother and her two children held each other on a cot to my right. It was March of 2022. Russia had invaded Ukraine only a few weeks earlier.

Minutes later, those refugees had been picked up and were on their way to longer-term shelters in Romania.

This refugee waystation room is now empty.

I sit here, wondering if my one-night volunteer effort is worth anything at all, when a stocky man with a dark blue Northface jacket pops his head through the plastic door.

“Do you speak English?” he asks in an American accent.

“Yeah.”

“Is your name Walter?”

“No,” I say.

I don’t ask, but he proceeds to tell me he’s looking for Walter, who will be assisting him with gathering supplies for the Ukrainian war effort. Mainly medical supplies, but also body armor and some explosives. The man says he’s an independent contractor and has experience in war zones. In his rambling, he says–no, brags– that he will cross the border with Walter in the morning and head toward Kiev. He asks if I’m going into Ukraine, too, and I tell him that I’m just there to volunteer at the refugee relief tent for the night. His glance around the empty room hints at what I already feel: I’m pretty much useless. I’m not doing much help here aside from helping myself to the heater. It’s freezing outside.

The man stands up.

“If you see Walter, let him know I’m looking for him.”

And he leaves. Mysterious. Nameless.

That was nearly 3 years ago. But it didn’t take long, sitting in that empty shelter on that green cot, for my imagination to wander. And it has, here and there, ever since. What if I said I was Walter? Or if I just asked to join them? Could I have been catapulted into the Russo-Ukrainian War? To fight “the good fight” that my generation never had? Unlike many other American foreign military interventions, on the surface this one seemed to be on the right side of history– helping the Ukrainians defend their sovereign territory against Putin’s authoritarianism. Of course, I am no soldier. I have no military experience. But I have seen enough one-man badass hero movies–from Rambo to The Equalizer– to stoke the imagination.

Stephen King wrote that his stories get sparked from real life situations that he infuses with a series of ‘what ifs…’ I have done something similar with my brief Ukrainian border experience (more on the story in this article I wrote in 2022).

So now I have a story premise: Three international teachers in Europe embark on a weekend trip to the Ukrainian border to aid refugees, expecting to make a small difference. But their desire to do more — driven by duty, adventure, and a search for meaning — leads them deeper into the conflict. Crossing into Ukraine, they soon find themselves close to the front lines, where their good intentions collide with the realities of war, leaving them very unprepared for what awaits.

I’ve already started writing this one in screenplay form.

So what’s the point of this blog again?

–I get my writing inspiration from real life.