The Magical Idea Factory

The Magical Idea Factory

If only such a place existed. The consensus among writers I’ve read seems to be that ideas are everywhere and up for grabs. Many writers keep a notebook to record thoughts and ideas as they occur.

The notebook plan isn’t for me. Here’s why. One, most of my day is spent in school and I am not free to stop what I’m doing and take notes about my life. Two, also job-related, I am not allowed to use a lot of the happenings around me at work for legal reasons. Three, my handwriting is atrocious. Four, where would I keep a notebook? My pockets are filled with keys, Chapstick, key cards, passes, and ibuprofen. Five, there is nothing about my job that I want to remember later–it is my daily goal to flush school memories before I leave the building.

Most of the time, my ideas are simply characters first. They appear suddenly, then live in my head for a few days, developing pasts and personalities. That’s when I write them down.

I have two folders on my computer for embryo thoughts. One is labeled “ideas”. I’ll type short descriptions of what has been growing in my brain and leave them there. For a short story I recently wrote entitled “God of the Mountain”, my idea file consisted of this sentence first: There’s a guy who was cursed with immortality and after a thousand years of solitude finds he shares his island with a superstitious tribe, who he uses to his advantage. The story stayed with that premise to a point. In the end, it was difficult to determine who was being used. I allow things in the idea folder to wander.

The other folder for embryo thoughts is titled “crap” because it tends to be of no use to my finished product. A lot of false starts end up in that folder. Also, characters write me letters, and they are filed there. Sometimes they have conversations with other characters–also, crap. The crap folder is the thickest folder on my computer, by the way. There are more crap pages related to my novel than there are pages in my novel.

I rarely delete files. On my worst days, seeing the thousands of pages of crap and the half-baked ideas reminds me that thoughts are percolating and eventually they may become something. Maybe the folder is misnamed. All the work that goes into crap pays off indirectly. It saddens me that in the process of killing my darlings, the darlings end up in the crap folder. No one will ever know how much I loved those passages that went nowhere.

As for where ideas originate, I don’t think anyone knows. I’ve read and watched countless author interviews, and other than practicing awareness to one’s own life, there is no magic formula to attract strong ideas. It’s a mysterious process and enough to make you believe in muses.

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