Dear friend,

When I say you can find inspiration everywhere, I mean that literally.

It was a joke when I suggested “pumpkin spice” as the theme for this year’s fall writing contest at The Company. I know pumpkin spice is a prevalent flavor this time of year, but it wasn’t until the other day that I realized just how thoroughly obsessed with the idea we are.

It doesn’t feel so funny anymore.

I was at Aldi, shopping for groceries with my housemate this week. We scrolled our shopping cart over to the dairy aisle for butter and cream cheese (to make cream cheese frosting obviously.)

I opened the glass refrigerator door and reached in to grab the cream cheese. Staring back at me near eye level was a cream cheese container that was orange and labeled “pumpkin spice flavor.”

I showed it to my housemate, who laughed. I had an ominous feeling in my stomach.

We moved on to the deli section for lunch meat, and picked out some sliced turkey. Then we glanced to our left.

There was a section of cheeses. You can tell the general price range of a cheese by the shape it comes in. These were the super-fancy-triangle-shaped cheeses. The first one that caught our eyes was labeled pumpkin spice.

The horror.

As we kept shopping, we saw “pumpkin spice” on coffee grounds and creamer, which at least is kinda normal. And then, as we walked to the check-out lane, just when I thought we finally escaped it, we saw it in bold letters on a Cheerio box.

Pumpkin spice is everywhere.

And it happens to be the theme of the fall writing contest I mentioned earlier. All you have to do is go to the grocery store or a coffee shop to find inspiration for a short story to enter the contest. It’ll be great practice for finding inspiration in daily life and exercising your creative muscles. And you have two whole months to write.

If you want more “pumpkin spice” inspiration, check out the short story I wrote last week as an example of where you could take your autumn-themed story.

For details on the contest, you can find more information on The Company’s website here. I’m not judging the contest this time, so let me know what your story idea is in the comments! I can’t wait to read what you come up with.

Sincerely,

R. J. Catlin