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When Ideas Strike
Jan. 7th, 2018 02:52 pmI'm listening to the audio book of BIG MAGIC by Elizabeth Gilbert in the car at the moment. I read the book last year and loved it...or maybe 2016...it's hard to pinpoint. Anyway, I'm no less entranced than I was two years ago.
She talks of ideas that come to nest, and if you don't pay them the attention they need, wander off to find another place to roost in. She cites a novel she began, and then, due to personal circumstances, could not tend to the novel for two years. When she did return to it, she knew immediately, that the zing of the idea had gone. She had all her research, a plan, characters, but nothing she did made the floppy dough of it rise
Then she got together for a chat with another writer, and found that she was writing this very idea. Details were different, but it was still the story of middle-aged Minnesota woman who was secretly in love with her married boss. The boss unwisely invests in a crazy scheme in Brazil, and the money and a person go missing, the woman is sent to find out what happened, and her tidy life is cracked open.
I've had this happen several times. Back in 1986 or so, I started writing some stories about a young wizard called Undar, who first of all just passed his wizarding exams, and then had to make his way in a crazy world, accompanied by a very resentful cat called Pussykins.
This was long before Harry Potter, before I'd heard of Terry Pratchett and Unseen University, back before Witch School, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and many other takes on wizarding school and exams.
I wrote perhaps three stories in this universe, and despite MotorCycleMan's urgings, left the idea alone.
Neglected, it went off and perched in other heads.
Back before Angela Slatter came out with 'Vigil', I imagined a weird Melbourne, full of mythological creatures, and wrote a novel called 'Night Things' for NaNoWriMo. It's still in first draft.
Now, I'm not claiming that these writers pinched my ideas. I'm just saying that, while life had other plans for me, these ideas, for lack of love and attention, went off to find others who would bring them to life.
No resentment, because Rowling, Pratchett, Slatter, Grossman, and all the rest have done far different takes that I.
There's room for us all at the table.
I'm simply saying that, yes, Liz Gilbert is right. Ideas do come along to be born, and if the artist doesn't have time, or is busy carrying on with another idea, the idea will often slide away to inhabit someone else who can bring them to life. This is why I have idea notes all over the place, and when I go back to them, they are deader than dead.
"Write about the colour of the Eiffel Tower" one note in a travel journal says. Write what? How? What for? It seemed great at the time, good enough that I made a note in red pen that I later transferred to the ideas file. But, now, I can't even come at what brilliance flashed into my head. It's gone, maybe to Billy Collins, or some travel writer.
A friend of mine, Lynne, is currently generating story ideas for her 'storage shed of ideas'. She does this by reading a lot of science-y stuff, and listening to music, and letting her mind wander.
I don't work like this. I have to wander around in the world until two random ideas collide, or the Muses send lightning. Luckily, while I'm wandering about, I'm living my life.
It sounds like I wait for the Muse to strike. No. Once I have that idea, I can happily to to the laptop whenever and get to work, as long as I've left the work in progress halfway through a paragraph or sentence, so that I at least have a line or two to be going on with. Then I'm back into it. I'm not that wafty that I have to sit around waiting for the right mood.
Lately, I've been wondering whether or not to let my cemetery novel go. It's been three years since I tended to it. I still think it's a good idea, but I never seem to get back to it. Perhaps it's time to thank it, send it on its way, and suggest that a Parisian author who knows Pere Le Chaise cemetery, and more about Napoleon, might be more suitable. Ghost story, you were fun to write while I was in Paris, but I suspect I might have stood up at the moment you were on target for another writer, and you entered me instead. I now let you go.
She talks of ideas that come to nest, and if you don't pay them the attention they need, wander off to find another place to roost in. She cites a novel she began, and then, due to personal circumstances, could not tend to the novel for two years. When she did return to it, she knew immediately, that the zing of the idea had gone. She had all her research, a plan, characters, but nothing she did made the floppy dough of it rise
Then she got together for a chat with another writer, and found that she was writing this very idea. Details were different, but it was still the story of middle-aged Minnesota woman who was secretly in love with her married boss. The boss unwisely invests in a crazy scheme in Brazil, and the money and a person go missing, the woman is sent to find out what happened, and her tidy life is cracked open.
I've had this happen several times. Back in 1986 or so, I started writing some stories about a young wizard called Undar, who first of all just passed his wizarding exams, and then had to make his way in a crazy world, accompanied by a very resentful cat called Pussykins.
This was long before Harry Potter, before I'd heard of Terry Pratchett and Unseen University, back before Witch School, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and many other takes on wizarding school and exams.
I wrote perhaps three stories in this universe, and despite MotorCycleMan's urgings, left the idea alone.
Neglected, it went off and perched in other heads.
Back before Angela Slatter came out with 'Vigil', I imagined a weird Melbourne, full of mythological creatures, and wrote a novel called 'Night Things' for NaNoWriMo. It's still in first draft.
Now, I'm not claiming that these writers pinched my ideas. I'm just saying that, while life had other plans for me, these ideas, for lack of love and attention, went off to find others who would bring them to life.
No resentment, because Rowling, Pratchett, Slatter, Grossman, and all the rest have done far different takes that I.
There's room for us all at the table.
I'm simply saying that, yes, Liz Gilbert is right. Ideas do come along to be born, and if the artist doesn't have time, or is busy carrying on with another idea, the idea will often slide away to inhabit someone else who can bring them to life. This is why I have idea notes all over the place, and when I go back to them, they are deader than dead.
"Write about the colour of the Eiffel Tower" one note in a travel journal says. Write what? How? What for? It seemed great at the time, good enough that I made a note in red pen that I later transferred to the ideas file. But, now, I can't even come at what brilliance flashed into my head. It's gone, maybe to Billy Collins, or some travel writer.
A friend of mine, Lynne, is currently generating story ideas for her 'storage shed of ideas'. She does this by reading a lot of science-y stuff, and listening to music, and letting her mind wander.
I don't work like this. I have to wander around in the world until two random ideas collide, or the Muses send lightning. Luckily, while I'm wandering about, I'm living my life.
It sounds like I wait for the Muse to strike. No. Once I have that idea, I can happily to to the laptop whenever and get to work, as long as I've left the work in progress halfway through a paragraph or sentence, so that I at least have a line or two to be going on with. Then I'm back into it. I'm not that wafty that I have to sit around waiting for the right mood.
Lately, I've been wondering whether or not to let my cemetery novel go. It's been three years since I tended to it. I still think it's a good idea, but I never seem to get back to it. Perhaps it's time to thank it, send it on its way, and suggest that a Parisian author who knows Pere Le Chaise cemetery, and more about Napoleon, might be more suitable. Ghost story, you were fun to write while I was in Paris, but I suspect I might have stood up at the moment you were on target for another writer, and you entered me instead. I now let you go.
