A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 23

Scott Myers
Go Into The Story
Published in
3 min readApr 23, 2021

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This is the 12th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: Lesbian escapes Russia by boat and sails to Canada to be with the woman she loves.

You might think traveling a thousand miles or climbing any mountain might just be in the songs, but a lesbian couple proved there is no distance when love is a possibility.

A lesbian has shared how she escaped her homophobic family in Russia by boat and sailed for nearly a year to Canada.

Elena is from Ivanovo, a city 250 km east of Moscow, was forced by her parents growing up to wear high heels and makeup to look like a ‘proper woman’.

And so as she reached her 20s, she agreed to her family’s wishes to get a boyfriend. A loveless and sexless marriage was her future.

But then online, she chatted with a Canadian woman named Meg.

‘Meg can do everything, she is a musician, she plays the piano, flies planes, sails boats … To me she was this incredible woman, she simply stunned me with what she could do, and, of course, I pretty much instantly fell in love with her,’ she said.

After six months, they decided to meet in Kiev, Ukraine.

Telling her parents she was leaving to go to the opera, she secretly packed a small bag to make her escape.

‘When I saw her, I saw she was standing in the crowd of people. I don’t know how to explain how I felt, but I think I was so excited that I could hardly understand what was going on around me.’

But as the days past in Kiev, she began to receive calls from her mother and boyfriend. And this time, she decided to be honest.

‘My mother was telling me to go back to Ivanovo and I was saying that I wouldn’t because then I would never see Meg again.’

Elena’s mother promised a civil discussion, who flew to Kiev.

‘I had no idea that my father would be there too. Meg and I just thought that we were going to see my mother to talk and that that would be it, but she brought my dad with her and they attacked us.

‘They grabbed me, held both my arms tight and brought me to a McDonalds near the train station. My father slapped three tickets on the table and said “you’re coming with us to Ivanovo.” That was their ultimatum for me, and it was the first time that I ever disagreed with them in my life.’

Elena and Meg

You have to read the rest of the story to believe it. They escaped to Turkey, bought a sailboat, and sailed for ten straight months without stopping before ending up in Canada.

Happily ever after? Not quite. Because Meg has a Canadian passport and Elena has a Russian one, they have yet to find a country where they both can live legally. Thus, they find themselves on the run, living aboard their sailboat. They have their own website and each has written a book about their experiences.

I don’t have anything to add to this story except to say someone should procure the rights and make this into a movie.

You can download a PDF of their story here.

A short documentary about the couple:

There you go, the 23rd story in this annual monthly project.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

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