Safety Pin Day & Other Peculiar Holidays

There are an abundance of peculiar holidays in April. Whether you prefer to write mysteries or romance, thrillers or fantasies, science fiction or historical fiction, I'm sure you can find one of them that catches your eye and causes storylines to start running through your mind.

Will you visit your local library on National Library Workers Day? Are you going to go barefooted on One Day Without Shoes? How many safety pins will you use on Safety Pin Day?

National Library Workers Day - This is the day to thank those who work in your local library for doing their job to make books available to you. For those of us who love to read, libraries are awesome!

Create a character who works in a library. I know that most would consider this to be a boring job, but it doesn't have to be. Your character, even though she doesn't try, has a way of spicing up this mundane job and making it very interesting. Mysterious things seem to head her way all the time. Cryptic notes begin to fall out of the books she is putting away. Books she has already put away appear back in the cart to be put away again. And she begins to get flowers delivered to her about every day. She has no idea who is sending them. What is going on?

One Day Without Shoes - When I was a little girl, I preferred to go without shoes. I was even able to run and jump on gravels barefooted and it didn't bother me a bit. It wasn't that I didn't own any shoes, it was my choice to go barefooted. There are children who don't have that choice. TOMS wants everyone to go without shoes on April 10 just to see what it is like. And for every pair of shoes you buy from them, they will give a brand new pair to a child in need.

What about magical shoes? Create a character who is in desperate need of a pair of shoes and a pair is presented to them by TOMS on this day. This character does not realize at first the gift that he/she has been given. How does she discover the shoes she has been given are magical? And just how magical are these shoes? What can they do? What does she do once she figures out the power of these shoes?

Safety Pin Day - Safety pins aren't used nearly as much today as they were at one time. Did you know that before there were buttons and buttonholes that people used safety pins were used to fasten clothing? Even before there were safety pins, regular pins that would poke you were used. So, how did safety pins come about? In 1849, Walter Hunt was trying to figure out how to pay back a $15.00 debt. While he sat at a desk thinking about how to repay this debt, he grabbed a piece of wire and twisted it continually. And the safety pin was born.

Walter sold the piece of wire he had twisted into a safety pin, along with all the rights to his creation, to the man he owed the debt. This new form of safety pin wouldn't poke.

You could write an historical fiction novel about how Walter Hunt figured out the improvement on the safety pin. Or you could write a story about lots and lots and lots of safety pins. Create a world where safety pins are used for everything, even to make buildings and automobiles.