Where Do Ideas Come From?

Image: Mauro Mora for Unsplash

The truth is, I don’t know. I could just say, dismissively, “everywhere and nowhere,” and that would be partially true. Sometimes I don’t even know an idea is an idea—if that makes any sense—until well after the fact. I’ll be writing and something will come back to me that I didn’t even consciously take note of at the time—an article I read, or a snatch of a song I heard, or a phrase someone used—and it will fit in perfectly with what I’m writing. Ideas on demand; now there’s a thought!

I think every author is influenced by what’s happening around them, by their own lives and the lives of others on a very daily, very granular level. And I’m often astonished by how relevant my ongoing thoughts and experiences are to whatever it is I’m writing. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

I work part-time in the digital department of a publishing company, and my manager there is constantly reading online—she gets curated articles via Pocket and Flipboard and other similar services—and often she’ll point out an interesting article that caught her attention. Yeah, articles catch my attention, too, and at most I’ll post them on Facebook of LinkedIn, but that’s about it. Not my manager! She’s convinced she reads things for a reason, and more often than not her “interesting” articles have worked their way into blog posts and podcasts and newsletters. And the thing is—it’s not forced. She doesn’t read about immigration and decide to write an article on immigration (or assign it to me to write!). Instead, she finds ways in which the article speaks to whatever it is she’s focused on. It’s almost magical.

I try to bear that in mind as I move through life.

Neil Gaiman—a god in the literary pantheon, and I say that as someone who doesn’t even read his genre—says he has no clue where his ideas come from (and whether one day they’ll stop!). This may be slightly disingenuous. He’s right when he says the ideas are the easy part; the work is in using them to create something real. That’s true. But the ideas have to start the process, the ideas have to illustrate it, and the ideas have to help it come to a conclusion.

Keith Richards went to sleep one night and, still sleeping, picked up his guitar and (thankfully) recorded the opening riff of Satisfaction before using the remainder of the tape to record his snoring. That’s definitely magical. Who knows what influences and thoughts and images and sounds had gotten jumbled in his brain until they were released that night? (That’s my take on it, of course; there are a lot of people who think differently, who believe in the artist-as-antenna concept in which special people are “given” ideas floating through the universe.)

I don’t think I have any special access to the world’s secrets whispered through the atmosphere. I have a whole lot of ideas that go precisely nowhere. I think the difference is I pay attention.

Okay, so anyone who knows me will probably be laughing right now. I’m not known for paying attention. I don’t notice a lot around me. I don’t “see” people I know in the street; I don’t notice what anyone is wearing; I don’t usually remember dates or anything else quotidianly important unless I write it down. Most people would say I don’t pay attention.

The thing is, I do—just to different things. I pay attention when stories are involved (I am, after all, fundamentally a storyteller). When someone talks about their feelings, or their experiences, or their options, I listen. When news accounts include someone’s reaction to an event, I file it somewhere. When a song’s lyrics, or a poem, or a short story evoke an emotional response, that stays with me.

When I teach writing, I often encourage students to keep what I call an “intuition list.” It can be in journal form, on the back of an old calendar, anywhere; it includes ideas that pop into students’ heads,  interesting word combinations, story lines they see that pique their interest, vocabulary/expressions they might want to use in their writing. Over the years, I have tons of these lists. I’ve used a fraction of them in my own work, but I revisit them from time to time to see if something relevant might pop out.

And that’s where ideas, good, bad, and indifferent, come from.