Where Do You Get Ideas?
September 2, 1998
6:39 a.m.
Where do you get your ideas? It's a cliched question, of course. Everyone who writes gets it sometime, and anyone who writes for a long time gets it often. A co-worker asked me that question yesterday, only he posed it as "What inspires you?" I thought it was a good question, actually. It turns out that I've been having an idea problem for the past few days. I've got several snippets, and a ton of basic scenes running through my head. But nothing that leaped into my head fully formed enough to write down the story sketch--which is what I promised Laura I would do. This morning I realized what I was doing, and a sheepish feeling crawled over my skin. I was making myself go through a process that made no sense. Telling myself that I had to write an outline before I could write any of the story. "It's more efficient that way," I told myself. All these little ideas, bursting at the seems. They all ran through my head, and they jumbled up. Not really a case of writers block so much as a case of writer's gush. Make sense? I needed to write a little of each of these ideas to flesh them out to a point where I understood them and could see where they were different and what they would bring to a story. I needed something more to judge them by. This morning I wrote the beginnings of three stories. And I found the one I wanted to write. And it sprang into my head nearly fully formed. Lesson of the day: Don't let self-imposed barriers keep you from producing.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"I'm always pleased to provide a pickle to a pregnant lady" Ron Collins in e-mail with regard to: I met Catherine Schaffer at WorldCon this year. Lisa and I ate lunch with her and Kurt roth one day. For folks who don't know, Catherine is an ex-Clarionite and reader of this journal. Halfway through lunch she looked at me and asked "Are you going to finish that pickle?" Pickles are not my favorite thing in the world, so I gladly handed it over. Catherine sent me an e-mail the other day kind of apologizing (totally unecessarily, of course) and letting me know that upon returning home from the convention she found out she was pregnant! Very cool! Congrats, Catherine. You have many, many wonderful years ahead of you. |
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