The Thursday! Newsletter 1-17: Let's Collect Ideas
Volume 1, Issue 17
Two weeks ago, I wasn't sure where I got my ideas. Now I am!
Let me start at the beginning. A couple of weeks ago, during one of Sarah Werner's excellent create-alongs, I mentioned that I had written two stories that week and that I was on a bit of a roll. One of my friends who is also a writer asked me how I came up with all my ideas. I glibly responded with an animated gif that was, I must confess, not true. I said I didn't know how I got my ideas, but I do. I don't like to say it because saying it out loud makes me feel a little bit silly, like I don't really know what I'm doing, unlike all those other professional writers who do.
Here, let me give you examples. Jack London said we should get our inspiration with a club and a notebook. Neil Gaiman makes them up out of his head (Really!). Legendary composer John Rutter says he doesn't really know except he really does now, and knows very well. Ray Bradbury made lists of nouns until he didn't need the lists anymore because he carried them around in his head all the time. Ursula LeGuin's answer is characteristically complex but boils down to "pull something interesting out of your head and write it down well". R. L. Stine gets them from everywhere and asks himself all kinds of questions about what he sees, which is very much akin to Stephen King's "what if" questions.
What I find interesting here is how each of these authors try, at least at the beginning, to make a joke or to shrug the question off. They do that, I think not because it is a difficult question to answer but because they don't want to be responsible for leading other writers astray.
I've come to think of writing a bit like riding a bike. Once you get moving, riding a bike is pretty easy stuff. Keep going forward, easy on the brakes, don't do anything completely insane, and you'll do all right. What's hard about riding a bike is getting going. Remember what that was like when you were younger? Maybe you were one of the "runners" who'd sprint for a few feet, with your bike next to you, then you'd jump on and start pedaling furiously to get yourself up to speed. Maybe you were a "scooter", like I was. I'd stand astride the bike, shove off a bit, use my left foot to push off once or twice, then jump up on the seat and pedal like a maniac.
I have to admit, starting a bike ride never became a very smooth experience for me. It got easier, but it was never easy. Balance was an issue at slow speed and the bikes I rode as a kid were older and heavy and I was kind of short and pudgy, so it's not like I could just manhandle them to get them up to speed.
That's writing, or any other creative endeavor as best I can tell. Once you're "in the flow" you can write or paint or play or whatever it is you do pretty well. Obstacles don't stop you as much as divert you and, since you're already rolling you can get back on course. Or not. Doesn't matter because you're creating and life is good.
But when you're new, you don't have many of those moments. You don't have the experience to know that creative inertia works just like regular inertia -- once you overcome it, you don't have to push as hard to keep on overcoming it. You don't know that most times, starting a story isn't pretty but that it gets pretty as you go. There's no trust in the process because how can you truly trust a process you've never seen work from the inside?
When you ask a writer from whence comes their ideas, that writer probably remembers all the months or years they wondered the same thing and tried a bunch of ideas and suggestions and how they asked their favorite authors and tried to emulate tham and...as you can see, it's complicated. Gaiman called the question "the question that much not be asked of an author", like saying Bloody Mary in a bathroom mirror at night or whispering "MacBeth" to a nervous Shakespearian actor. We won't talk about the creative folks who are just grumps about the whole thing, like Harlan Ellison (to use a famous example) or Stephen King for a big chunk of his career. They see the question as a nuisance, which is a shame because an experienced artist can be a huge help to those behind them on the path.
It does require a bit of delicacy, which I'm going to attempt right now. I don't think there's a good answer to the question that applies to everyone, all the time. The best, I think, any writer or artist or filmmaker can get is "here's how I do it", which doesn't exactly lend itself to a tutorial. That doesn't mean it's not a useful answer. We just can't use it as a how-to.
That's okay, though. Some things can't be found with a map. Some things, you have to wander a bit to find. So let's wander.
I am an idea collector. I walk around with my eyes and ears open (mostly) and the thought in the back of my mind that somewhere out there right now is an idea that'll one day make a fantastic story. Here's how that works. I collect things I find interesting -- scraps of conversation, something I see in a store, an advertisement, a news story, a blog post, whatever -- and I tuck them into the back of my mind where all the other things I've foraged have been simmering or composting or mingling or whatever word you'd like to use. I tend to think of my "repository of ideas" as a stew pot. I throw stuff in and every once in a while ladle out a healthy serving of whatever I need. So long as I keep collecting things and tossing them in, I'll have a good pot of "idea stew" from which I can draw when I need.
This seems like magic when it works, but it isn't magic any more than it's magic to ladle a tasty bowl of gumbo from a simmer pot into which you've thrown a whole bunch of quality ingredients. It's not exactly scientific and I can't break it down into bullet points but neither is gumbo. Sure, you can work from a recipe, but every good gumbo is as different as the person who makes it. Some folks like okra and some don't and some go heavy on the chicken but some lean on that shrimp. Some folks put in alligator tail and, well, that's not me but you do get the idea. It's stew! You throw in great stuff and you wait and then you get stew!
The beauty of being an Idea Forager, though, isn't that it is an ongoing process that I can change as I go. We can't throw just any idea into the pot. Sometimes we need to give the pot a stir and see if anything in there isn't quite getting with the program. It's okay to pull an idea out that just doesn't work and get rid of it. You'll get more. Better to throw away a bad idea than to chew on it for hours before you get discouraged and declare yourself No Kind Of Author So Why Even Bother. Ditch the bad stuff; put in more good stuff.
I don't write down many of my ideas. I used to, but then I realized I was writing down ideas just to get to a certain number instead of writing down things that had something interesting about them. That, by there way, is the part of Bradbury's lists of nouns that gets overlooked. He didn't just write down a bunch of words. He wrote down words that interested him. He collected nouns that had some meaning, that could simmer up very nicely. Later in his career, he didn't need the list because he his pot was on boil all day every day. He could scoop a story out of it at will because he knew it would always be full.
And that is the real secret about getting creative ideas reliably. You have to move forward. You don't have go look great doing it, just like you didn't have to look great riding that bike for the first twenty yards, but you have to go that-a-way. If something in your own process is slowing you down or feels "dead", drop it and move on. Don't beat yourself up. Don't throw on the brakes and evaluate your whole life through the lens of a single failure. Just go. Collect more stuff. Let it all simmer. Scoot or sprint or whatever and then pedal hard. You'll be fine.
Now come on. Let's go collect some ideas. I have a pot that needs more of the good stuff.
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What I'm Writing and Reading this Week
"Just Another Night on Patrol", with a unicorn, a dimensional portal, and a patrol officer just trying to do her job.
"New Man on the Bridge". Ever wonder how road inspectors deal with bridge trolls? Surprisingly well!
I'm not sure I buy into his entire ethos, but I found these thoughts from "The Father of Advertising" interesting, especially when bent to the purpose of a professional author.
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Here Are the Arts and/or Letters I Promised...
Shorpy is one of my favorite sites for "fun-scrolling". I usually don't get more than a minute in before I find an interesting photograph like this one for simple perusal or a story idea. If you do a little homework, you can usually trace the photo back to its source in the Library of Congress archives. That's where the real rabbit hole begins!
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One Last Thing
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