How lovely to be back!
And in our regular home, too, as construction on the Fairview Branch of
the Santa Monica Public Library had been postponed yet again.
Who knows whether folks reeeeeally missed the Westside
Writers Schmooze or Charlie and Karol’s beefed up promotional efforts, coupled
with Jeff Cox’s awesome year-long concept Schmooze experiment idea, paid off
big time. Either way, there was a
packed house – 36 Schmoozers, a handful of which were attending their very
first Schmooze – at the September 10th Schmooze kicking off the
Journey with – The Spark…And What To Do With It.
Naturally Charlie’s prep for the night was focused primarily
on the big picture concept of where ideas come from and how they’re generated,
whereas Karol was all about the nuts and bolts of basic plotting and
brainstorming the particulars of a potential story idea. (This, boys and girls, is why Mama
Karol and Papa Charlie make such a good team.)
Charlie gave free reign to his addictive personality and
binge watched a whole bunch of
Ted Talks on the subject of “Where Do Ideas Come
From” and found that most of our ideas about ideas are wrong! We usually think of an idea as a single
thing – a flash of inspiration, or a stroke of genius, but according to Steven
Johnson (author of
Where Good Ideas Come From) an idea is simply a new
network of old neurons, firing
in a synch that has never happened before. He says the way to bring this about is to excite your sleepy
neurons with new experiences and interactions. Ideas are cobbled together from whatever is nearby so try to
seek out spaces where ideas “can have sex,” that is, where intellectual
collisions are part of the social intercourse. Ahem.
Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) said that in modern times we misuse the words
creativity and genius to our own detriment. Apparently, since the days of ancient Greece and Rome, and
until fairly recently, creativity was thought to come to humans,
not from them. “Genius” referred to a spirit that
helped the author create, not the author him or herself. The key is not to be a
genius, but to open yourself up to it; to let the creativity flow through you,
not to manufacture it.
…which is all well and good unless you happen to be Tom
Waits who was speeding down a freeway at rush hour when he heard a glimpse of a
melody. As a younger man he would
have risked his life to pull over and jot it down but this day he said to the
sky: “Excuse
me, can you not see that I’m driving? Come back later or go bother
Leonard Cohen.” The point being,
you don’t need to grab every bit of genius that wanders by. If you miss something, relax, and count
on the fact that more will be coming.
After Charlie's sparkling intro, it was a great night for full participation, with many
Schmoozers chiming in their thoughts throughout the evening. A few people said they get ideas from
dreams. It was noted that story
sparks can come from an interesting character, a theme or premise you want to explore
or even an intriguing location.
“Story ideas” don’t always start with a story.
New Schmoozer Scott said he breaks up writing sessions by
playing piano for 15 minutes to cleanse his creative palate, as it were. Another person remembered that Maggie
Stiefvater, a keynote speaker at the SCBWI Summer Conference, admitted, “I
steal people” – meaning that she “steals” characters and ideas from the world
around her.
Ray Bradbury’s musings on “the
impulse to write” and how “ideas are like apples, ripe for the picking” was
also mentioned.
Westside Writers Schmooze stalwart Greg Pincus offered that
ideas often come from “looking at the familiar in a different way” and also
admitted that being under pressure with a deadline on one project has a
dastardly way of making one’s brain come up with a bunch of cool idea for other projects.
Once the esoteric business of discussing idea creation was
exhausted, Karol was finally able to breathe again when she steered the
conversation into a more concrete discussion of how to determine if there’s
really a book in your bright and shiny new idea. The general consensus was that any idea could potentially be
a book, but not every idea should.
One key factor, as Greg suggested, is to ask yourself, “Do I
like this idea enough to stick with it?”
Whether or not others might like it shouldn’t really matter. Another Schmoozer offered this
gem:
Sometimes I like an idea
so much it starts working me.
Clearly, one surefire way to figure out whether an idea has
potential is to begin fleshing out the story and see where it goes. To that end, Karol created a story
worksheet handout (which terrified and appalled Charlie in its specificity) and
Schmoozers spent about 15 minutes filling them out – or trying to. (Print out a copy of the worksheet
HERE.)
The results varied, but the
vast majority of Schmoozers broke Charlie’s heart by loving the worksheet, many finding themselves with great
new stories or amazing breakthroughs in the stories they’ve been musing
about. It took a lot of work but
Charlie did manage to find a few Schmoozers to chime in with frustrations about
the worksheet, but they were pretty half-hearted. The truth is, even Charlie had
to admit that it wasn’t as much of a nightmare as he’d expected. Then he left
the room, weeping.
The Journey Of Your Book continues next month on Wednesday,
October 8th: Plotting, Structure And Other Stuff Your Book
Kinda-Sorta Needs. Whether you absolutely dread this part
of the process (like Charlie) or revel in it (like Karol), please come share
your ideas, questions, techniques and even resentments.
Until then, keep passing the open windows,
Charlie & Karol
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