The Evolution of Ideas

Starting a new novel always feels a little bit like hope. A sort of feverish and blind hope covered up with copious amounts of justification as soon as the novel starts to be serious enough to maybe work.
It's my experience that at first, an idea is just an idea. We writers are often reluctant to take these ideas too seriously. Because how many ideas blow through like a windstorm, gripping us for the few days or weeks that it takes them to pass by, and afterward, what do we have? Nothing. No real story. We're afraid to waste our time on such ideas. When I first started writing I just went with the creative winds wherever they blew, but you can start to feel a bit jaded from that. You start to realize these ideas might drop out from beneath you and suddenly stop working. And then no amount of pushing or coaxing will get them to move.

So it's a much better thing to wait for an idea that just won't go away. If it stuck around for the hazing, it should be good for another six months, right? That's where the hope starts. With the little kernel of something that might be an idea--someday.

Writers tend to have a lot of these kernels floating around; we collect them wherever we find them, and sometimes when we're bored or looking for new material, we dump all the kernels out and start trying to fit them together like Lego pieces. We may find to our surprise that this particular kernel is a perfect match to that other piece we found ages ago, so we stick them together and leave them alone. And this is happening with plenty of other kernels, all the time, so at any given point you have all these half-built Lego kernel things in the box. It's impossible to tell which ones will be interesting.

But somewhere in there is one special idea. The Next Big Idea. Only, we don't know which one it is yet. We may have our suspicions. We have our hopes. We may even spend more time trying to stick Lego pieces to this one, because we want it to grow more than the others.

Source

And in the meantime, of course, we're out living life. We're probably writing another novel that's consuming most of our brain sludge. We're putting gas in the car and watching Dr. Who and staying up too late because we drank a coffee at six in the evening. Whatever. We are busy, and busy makes it easier to stay patient.

But even in the midst of all that, there's this wistful kind of hunger in the back of the brain that wants the magic to happen, like a pendent knocking against your chest with every step, and the wistfulness is always going, "now? How about now? Do I get to happen now?"

We wish and we hope. Because we are wishing and hoping so hard, and because we know how badly it can go if we mess it up, we are very cautious about letting that hope loose. The very fact that we want this idea so badly is the reason we resist it. Because if we're wrong about it? That would stink.

But the thing is--that idea is out there. And it is growing. We try to ignore that it is growing. We clip the necessary Lego pieces together and try to set it back on the shelf, but it's growing so quickly that we end up standing there for a long time, building this thing from our pile of kernels, and all the while we keep chanting "it's just an idea. Just a quiet little idea." And we refuse to tell anyone we have it. Because telling others makes it serious. And we are so, so, SO hesitant to take this idea seriously.

But then it comes to a point where the idea just won't go away. When we go to bed, it's there. In the aether moments before shutting down our laptop, it's there. When we're sick of our current project, it's there. And when we drive and when we wake up and when we're supposed to be doing other things, it's there, and we start to get agitated for no real reason other than we have a phantom idea haunting us. And it just won't go away until we blurt, "Fine. Fine! I'll write it already!"

And you give the idea a go.

Sometimes you can arrange this to happen in a really professional way. Perhaps you finished one novel, and after a respectable period of mourning (joke) you're ready to start a new one. Then you can roll your sleeves up briskly and open a new word document and sip your tea and pretend you don't feel super nervous about writing those first lines. About making this quiet little idea into something serious.

But sometimes it is better not to do it in a serious and professional way. Sometimes, it's easier to trick yourself into thinking that this idea is nothing, a little fun nothing, a pet project, a late night indulgence you can shrug off in the harsh light of morning. Because you don't want to scare this idea off. Nothing scares an idea off easier than taking it too seriously too soon. There's a moment of decision, see, when you have to decide if you're going to keep pushing this idea down, or if you're going to ignite the inferno. And sometimes having a late night writing session is a way to test the idea without quite making that decision. At night, an idea is just an idea, a blank page is full of possibility; in the morning, an idea is a heavy thing with weights and balances, and the blank page strains with the burden of them.

So anyway, at some point--maybe late at night--you take this deep breath. And you plunge.

And if all goes well, you keep plunging, maybe for a week, or two weeks; and if it goes badly, you come up the next morning or day having made your decision that no, this idea does not have what it takes. But if it went well, you come up at the end of those two weeks so rigid with excitement that you could scream, and you can no longer put off making the decisions that this novel is here to stay.

And that's when the whole game changes.

Instead of running from the idea, you turn around and start chasing it. Because now the responsibilities arise. There is a level of commitment. There are expectations of genre and wordcount, marketability, contracts, deadlines. Now you have to work to keep the fire hot. The reason it changed, you see, is because after we get serious, it's a whole lot of work.

Once an idea becomes a written thing--once we start putting certain words down in cement--the whole thing starts to sprawl out from that original foundation. You have to start making decisions about which direction you're going to take, and which possibilities will be left unexplored. Sure you can change things in revisions. But the urge is to get it right. And get it right now. To tell the story that's been haunting you, not another possibility of this story. An idea is an idea, but a story is the best possible way to explore that idea, and writing/rewriting/re-rewriting/etc etc etc is digging until you've uncovered the truest way to tell that story.

What was once this kernel became a collection of inter-working possibilities. Then it begins to grow, but like a potted plant grows, with the roots trapped inside the confines of the pot. You're shaping the pot as you go along. You're trying to make the right decisions about this idea because the roots are going to keep growing all the way to the end, and you've got to make sure they grow the right way so they don't choke each other out and kill the plant. These possibilities start shrinking narrower and narrower until you're straining for the one truest possible possibility of them all.

And once you finally get a good glimpse of that truest story, you will spend the rest of the drafting and editing experience trying to drag it out from the depths of this idea. Those true bits will start to carry the weight of things. They will start to ease the work off your shoulders. They will be so true, and so firm, that it will become more and more difficult to explore the possibilities, because there simply aren't possibilities anymore, only truths and less-truths and flat out untruths.

When you finally find that ultimately true story, everything after that is work toward that truth. Quite suddenly the idea is no longer an idea. It comes to feel like an entity of its own.

You could say this is the end, the happily ever after, except in a way, it's not; we writers get to start all over. We begin with the wistfulness and the longing. Again with the kernels and the hope. This novel may not see the light of day--nor the next--but eventually the right idea will come at the right time.

And I think I'll stop there, because that's a whole other story.


Truly and always,
-Creative A

Spontaneity, Homework, and Pennsylvania

Just so you know, I didn't actually take this. Or any of these photos.
I was too busy being spontaneous to remember my camera.

Today being part of what I like to call Chaos Week, but is more commonly known as Midterms, meant that I had to tackle the PHP final project that has been looming over me for the past two weeks. For those of you who don't know, PHP is a web language, but it's not a friendly web language. It's not like CSS with rainbows and sunshine and lots of things floating everywhere. Or even HTML, which is like hanging out in a dentist's office with lots of blank walls and pastels and uncomfortable chairs. No. PHP is is the business man on a construction site wearing the hardhat and holding a clipboard, giving you a stern look. PHP will play nice only if you obey all the rules and wear your own hardhat and get things done ahead of schedule and below budget.

See? Hard hat guy is not amused.

That is probably more than you ever wanted to know about code, but anyway, moving on. I've taken PHP before and I kind of enjoy it. You start to feel very professional and gritty when you wear a hard hat and walk around a construction site like you own it, which is how PHP starts to feel once it puts you through bootcamp and decides you're worthy.

But this semester, PHP has not been my friend. It kind of went, "Hah! You thought you knew me, but now I am going to be sly and evil and stop acting the way I'm supposed to, even though you're using arrays the way they're supposed to be used, and all the right syntax but maybe it's not the right syntax, maybe you've forgotten, and I am going to make you wonder, I am going to make you question everything."

By which I mean it took me two weeks and about 10 hours to work arrays into my simple program.

I was like, really? Really, PHP? Now I'm behind on my final.

Also, I now dread the idea of this final.

So I finished every other scrap of PHP homework I could, putting off this durned final, until today, when it could be put off no longer, at which point I hemmed and hawed and whined a bit about wanting to get out of my apartment. Perhaps (I thought) if I leave my apartment, and go to a nice coffeeship where I can maybe buy a Pumpkin Latte (even though I have quit coffee*) or a Bubble Tea (even though Bubble Teas cost, like, $4 a pop and I am a poor poor student writer) maybe, maybe then, I will get some work done. (Note that normally I would buy a tea. But it was a bad day. I was trying to lure myself out with the promise of treats.)

I am addicted to Bubble Tea. But FYI, not actually tea, not usually.
Nowdays it's more like a tasty milkshake with tapioca pearls at the bottom.
The overall thing sounds gross, I know. But it's incredibly good.

But that brought up the topic of where I could go. Since moving to College By the Sea, I have discovered that there is a real dearth of good homework places to go to. I don't know about you guys, but as a writer and a web designer and a college student, I spend way too much time indoors, on my laptop. So not only does a good homework place get me out and about where people are, where internet and power sources are, where there's the promise of drinks (aforementioned) and snacks if I break down and buy myself food--but it also needs to have some element of fresh air about it. The optimal and somewhat unrealistic homework place would even be, GASP, outside. I need windows where I can see nice views at the very least. I also need it to be a quieter sort of shop that won't get too busy around dinner or lunchtime, and where they won't mind me hanging out for three or four hour stretches, nursing my $1 tea. It needs to be a cheap place where I could buy tea for $1 and not $3 or $5 dollars. Oh. It also needs to be close by.

Which is to say there's a real dearth of good homework places to go to.

In fact, when I first moved here, I was quite desperate. I have since discovered a scattered handful of parks that do not charge you for entry, and made a sort of compromise with a Panera Bread and a local coffeeshop, but none of those are ideal--too noisy, to expensive, too loud, too far--and I'm endlessly circling back to my original question.

Where should I go to do homework?

Normally when I'm stuck, I pray about this. And I sort of start packing up and heading out while prying until one direction feels more right than the other.  Because I was so down in the dumps today, I ended up settling for the local coffeeshop with the $4 Bubble Teas, but as I flipped on my right blinker to pull out of the parking lot, I felt a kind of check, a sort of urge, to go to the left.

I was like, God, there's nothing in that direction besides the park. And the park doesn't have benches. I need benches to work on my laptop for any length of time, You know that.

But there it persisted. Go left.

And I went left. I started heading in the general direction of the park, and it was a lovely day outside, and I started to get the sense that maybe I needed an adventure before I did homework. Maybe I was going to drive around for a while and see Lovely Fall Leaves and enjoy New Sights and oh boy, look, a Dunkin Donuts! It was a sign! So I got myself a Pumpkin Spiced Latte and was feeling much better and more adventurous already. And when it came time to turn right toward the park, I turned left again.

Except mine was from Dunkin Donuts. Cough cough cough.

And I drove. Not only did I see Lovely Fall Leaves and New Sights, but I saw cornfields standing dry and golden, and the overdeveloped concrete landscape giving way to hills that plummeted away from me into green and mauve valleys, and the road got tinier and I got happier, and the trees started forming little tunnels overhead, lit through with the setting sun and burning red leaves, and all of the sudden I was In The Country. By which I mean, I saw a sign reading "Welcome To Pennsylvania."

The roads looked like this. Can't you just breathe on roads like this?

By then, I was starting to feel it was time to find a park. So I began slowing down a little and praying some more (here God? Am I here?) and was beginning to worry I'd never find one, when, huzzah, I did. Not only was it big and pretty with trees and footpaths and a little creek, but it was also had a pavilion. I don't normally like pavilions, but this was one nice pavilion. It had a high, overarching ceiling, and it was set on top of a slope so I could look out and see the park, and the sun was streaming in, and it had these fantastic picnic tables, and there was a Comfort Station** nearby, and to top all that off, there were electrical plugs by every single picnic table.


I was in heaven. I flipped open my laptop and got to work.

This is going in a novel someday, I swear.

This finally brings me to my point. (Did you guys think I had one? I bet not. To your credit, this is probably the longest introduction-to-a-point ever.) Actually, it's more of a metaphor than a point. But potato patato. My point is this:

The way I go about doing homework is a lot like the way I go about writing. By which I mean, the occasional outburst of spontaneity is required.

Because do you know what happened as a result of all this? I lost half an hour in driving and I stopped dreading my PHP final. By the time I got there, I was excited. Rejuvinated. I got to look at pretty things and hear the birds singing, and also this intensely peaceful rushing quietness the country tends to have. I got to write down all the If/Else/Then logic of my PHP program with the sun shining on my head. I got to breathe deep and enjoy it instead of plugging away in my dank little apartment (it's not really dank, but it would have felt that way. The little part is true though.) where I would have been miserable.

People talk about BIC or Butt In Chair, which means Sit Down And Get It Done No Matter What, You Big Fat Lazy!!!

And some days, BIC is important. A lot of days BIC is important. But those days are when you're drafting and you know what you need to write and you just need to plug your way through it, or the days when you're editing and you're tired of editing but you have a deadline and you just need to plug your durned way through it. But after a period of plugging away, you need a period of unplugging. (Did you see what I did there? Oh, she's smooth.)

This is sort of like the topic of recharging, which I am a huge fan of. But it's not quite the same thing as recharging--that requires you to have drained your batteries to their last dregs. What I did today was more along the lines of upkeep. Like, oh, hey, if I want to get through this big project, I need to make sure I breathe a little in between mile markers, or I'm going to pass out before I finish.

Or I guess you could just jog off into the sunset, like this lady is doing, consequences be damned?

It takes persistence to continue, but it takes maturity to know when to stop. To know when not enjoying it anymore is a sign that you need to make it enjoyable again.

So, moral of the story? The whole long drawn out adventure story?

Well, for one, I made headway in my PHP final. But the real moral is that sometimes you need to just go for a drive. If I can quote Neil Gaiman: "It's that easy, and that hard."

Which is true.

Truly and always,
-Creative A

*Even though I stinkin love coffee! And coffeeshops! And drinking it while writing! And basically everything associated with coffee except the jitters! But I'd been drinking such copious amounts over the past year I suspected it was starting to screw up my system, so I quit over the summer, and I've been healthier since. Which is why I occasionally allow myself a teeny tiny spiced pumpkin latte when I'm desperate.

**The idea of a Comfort Station was news to me, until I noticed the traditional bathroom signs. And then I thought how funny Comfort Station was. Because the idea of bathrooms was comforting. And then I thought, well, Restroom doesn't make much sense either, does it? Who goes to the bathroom to rest? If it was a rest room, there would be cots in there or something. So I guess Comfort Station*** is as good a term as any.

***Only now I'm curious how popular it is over restroom. Like, if public sanitary facilities were a YA novel, would the majority of folks be Team Comfort Station or Team Restroom?

Date a Girl Who Reads

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes." -- Rosemarie Urquico (via Monica Bird)

I am sharing this because it's gorgeous, and it's true, and I love it. And that was one too many reasons not to share.

Truly and always,
-Creative A

Creativity: An Intentional, Unpredictable Process

Creativity is such a weird thing. It is looking at what already exists around us, seeing the patterns, the cliches, the original ideas, the core elements that comprise it, and then based on all these things, coming up with something new.

It is not a lightbulb moment in the middle of the night. It is more like spontaneous combustion, like a haystack sitting for months and months in a field, just stewing away, and nobody knows, nobody sees. All anyone sees is the moment when it bursts into flame. So you can be intentional about it--you can foster an environment that will allow things to stew--but, at the same time, if you have fifty creative haystacks in the same field, who's to say when each one will blow?

It makes us creative types look pretty nutty. We spend hours and hours of our time pouring into these creative stewpots, which looks more like taking long walks, visiting art galleries, drinking coffee, talking shop with other like-minds, staring at the empty easel or Word document or video camera, laughing a lot, quoting random artists, crying a lot, and drinking more coffee. It looks less like work and more like a kind of long-distance relationship that we are passionately obsessed about. In other words, self-imposed torture. 


You cannot force the process. You can work really hard at it, but you cannot force it.

Which brings us to the weirdest part of all, the caveat that blows people's brains and makes them doubt our authenticity. If a creative person sits down with a deadline intending to create something, and they do not leave until this occurs, something will be created. Any college student learns this lesson. We all forget it as soon as we can, but at one point, we did learn it.

If we want to, if we really, really bend ourselves to the task, creative people can create things.

I know that's shocking. Plus it somewhat contradicts what I said before about the process being impossible to force. But if you think about all the people who have jobs that involve being creative on a daily basis--TV writers, for instance, who have to write and revise scripts daily--you realize creativity must have an intentional element to it. They can create, because they put their minds to it, because they must. They work that muscle and something comes out.

You must also realize, however, there's no guarantee what the particular TV episode will be about, and early intentions may have to shift, and the quality may be awful, or the episode may be shockingly good. No matter how hard a creative person works their creative "muscles," they can't have everything they want.

It is this process, and it is also intentional, and it involves hardworking decisiveness, but also an ability to go with the flow.

Let me put it this way. One can't always meet their creative standard. But one can almost always, barring certain circumstances, end up creating something.

Don't you love this? I just love it. It means if I work hard, I can achieve something; yet there's an element of magic that I can't control, can't predict, can't get bored with. Have you ever considered for a moment what it would be like, if humans didn't have creativity? Have you ever noticed how much joy, and pain, and love is involved with creation?

I am really awed that God not only made the universe, but made me with the ability to be creative myself. It is a glimpse into His mind and Heart that no other creature on the planet has. Only artists can truly appreciate the work that goes into a piece of art; with my creativity, I honor the One who invented it all to start with. I think that's so beautiful.


Truly and always,

-Creative A