The Creative Storm: Where Ideas Come From

In my last post, I wrote about how I wrote down the very first words of a new book idea after an inspirational drive on the 405 freeway. This novel has been gathering in my mind, like storm clouds, but despite the swirling energy, it's not time for this particular idea to actually be a creative storm. It's still brewing, still simmering, still trying to figure itself out. And besides, another idea started boiling over first.

This second new idea for a book has been gathering in my mind for about ten years. Last year, the shape and structure of it popped into my brain all at once (well, actually what happened was I read a fantastic book by a fabulous writer and I was inspired by what she had done.) I was in the middle of finishing The Threadbare Heart, however, and I was teaching and I my older daughter was doing college applications, and there was not room in my life for this idea. Now there is. And it's as if this idea stood up, started jumping up and down and waving its arms and yelling, "Now, now, now" or "Me, me, me!"

People often ask writers and other creative people where they get their ideas. The great Willie Nelson said, "The air is full of tunes; I just reach up and pick one." I love this quote (and reference it all the time -- so forgive me if I've written about it in this space one or two or more times already.) It captures so much about the ever-present nature of ideas, and something about how one bright shiny idea gets singled out amidst the clamor of many others. It also captures the conscious role of the creator -- and that's something I know to be true about idea. You have to pick. You have to bring a discerning mind to the process. Perhaps Nelson recognizes the ripeness and beauty and readiness of an idea. For me, it's as if I can literally hear the idea asking to be chosen. Or, more precisely, it's as if I can't ignore the noise of it -- louder, more insistent than the others.

People new to writing, or to the creative life, may recognize the insistent idea, the shiny idea, the idea that's ripe for choosing, but they aren't comfortale commiting to it. How do they know it's the right idea? What happens if it's the wrong idea? And what about the other ideas they are ignoring in favor of this one? Painter David Hockney has the perfect answer for these questions. "Sometimes," he said, "I just begin."

It's that easy, and that difficult. You pick. You begin.

And so, just three days before Christmas, I have a new idea at the forefront of my creative life. Just two weeks after sending in final, final edits on The Threadbare Heart, I have a new project -- and another waiting in the wings, waiting for its turn, waiting for the creative storm to break. Maybe it will break while I am in the midst of idea #2, which is now idea #1. Or maybe it won't break until I'm finished. I don't know. And I'm okay with that.

First Words on Paper

I have had an idea for a new novel swirling in my head for awhile, now. Yesterday, on the way to guest teach a class in Santa Monica, I was stuck on the 405. And the title came to me. And the main character's voice. And really, the whole thing, in one fell swoop. I wrote it down on three pieces of paper (yeah, writing and driving; it's a bad habit) and today, I opened a new file, and wrote the very first words of this story -- just a character sketch, a plot sketch. But still. It's something. It feels like something. It feels good.

Guest Artist, Gemma Mortlock

I asked artist Gemma Mortlock to write about her
creative process, and love how she talks about creativity and time of day. Here are her words:

My name is Gemma Mortlock and I work in the animation industry in London. In my spare time I write poems, stories, paint, draw, and make jewellery. I am an all round creative person; I don't like to limit myself to one particular craft. If i see something I like I always try to find out how it was made and if i could create something similar. I have always drawn and painted and that is my all time favourite hobby. From as far back as I can remember I've drawn on napkins in restaurants, textbooks at school and till receipts at my previous job in retail. Drawing is my escape into my own little imaginary world. It helps me to focus, calm down and grounds me when I feel confused or upset. I cannot ever imagine not drawing; I would be completely lost in a world I wouldn't be able to understand.

The creative process for me begins when I wake up. The moment I open my eyes I am usually inventing some poem or drawing related to the weather or sounds that fill my house. Most of the time I keep these things of mine, dreams, poems, stories etc to myself or I jot them down in many of the little journals I have which are cluttering up my bedroom. The journals for me are endless supplies of inspiration. Anything I find, hear see or do goes into them, snippets of conversations, a wrapper or leaf I find blowing around in the park all gets glued into these beautiful little books for future reference. It also helps me a lot if the book I chose is beautiful. At the moment I am using a handmade leather journal that i bought for £10.00 at a market in Piccadilly London. It is actually the most beautiful journal I have owned so far; it has hand stamped leather and hand bound paper throughout and when you write on the paper it seems to cushion your pen. These journals then help me to design jewellery, give me inspiration to paint pictures or come up with poems or stories.

I find I am at my most creative at around 5pm in the evening. So this is the time I usually sit drawing or fiddling with silver wire and beads for my jewellery items. When it comes to jewellery I try to imagine somebody wearing the item before I make it; this helps me to stay focused on the finished look of the piece but also allows a little room for change.

http://www.sandyfloorboards.blogspot.com/ is my online journal and a constant source of fun and inspiration. The people I have met through my blog are some of the kindest and sweetest people i know. Blogland is full of creative goings on and never fails to amaze me. The name -- Sandy Floorboards -- came from a line of a story I am in the process of writing and kind of stuck. I felt that it sums me up in one sentence as nature at the sea is one of my favourite places to be inspired to create, with its' never ending seasons and changes colours, its' dramatic textures and sense of isolation. I find you can really be yourself by the sea. It also never fails to bring out my childish side and my wandering imagination. The most important thing to help me create is the love and support of my family and fiance who always stand by me and encourage me no matter how ridiculous my idea may seem. They are and always will be the roots for my creative tree.

The End of Narrative?

For reasons that escape me, I receive a copy of New York magazine every week. I've never subscribed to the magazine, I don't pay for it, and I live in suburban Los Angeles. But still, New York magazine arrives. I often spend a few minutes flipping through it, because it reminds me of just how diverse the world really is. In other words, it reminds me that I live in a sunny West Coast mother-bubble. The articles frequently shock me, sometimes horrify me. And it's not as if I'm a complete neophite; I lived in New York City for three yearsm and worked as an editorial assistant at a slick city magazine there.

Anyway, this week New York magazine arrives, and there are some year wrap-up pieces, and the one that caught my eye was called When Lit Blew Into Bits by Sam Anderson. I read it with fascination -- because, to be honest, I felt completely outside the experience Anderson was talking about. He was describing a world in which reading is so fragmented that few people have the desire or the ability of the time to read a long narrative. He was talking about the ways that technology (blogs, ipods, etc) has trained us to read "text fragments narrated by radically diverse voices."

I'm reading this piece, thinking, huh? I just finished reading the 1,000-plus- page Pillars of the Earth, and then started in on Kathryn Stocket's hefty, The Help. My 8th grader is reading Pride and Prejudice for fun, Lord of the Flies for school. My 12th grader is reading Hamlet for school, and re-reading the Twilight series for the third or fourth time, for fun (hey, she's under a lot of stress; she needs some mindless page-turning.) My husband just finished a Gore Vidal novel, and is thinking about reading that Grisham pirate book, even though the reviews haven't been great. Is my family completely alone in this?

There is nothing like sitting down to read a long narrative. I don't think anything will ever replace it. The format by which it is delivered may change, but not the human desire for the slow unfolding of story. Anderson talked about the coming "interactive hypertexts we'll all be neuroskimming on the mind screens of our Kortex-Kindles." We may indeed come to a place where reading happens via some super souped-up whiz-bang technology. But I don't believe for a second that we will move away from long narrative.

Do you? Read more: Sam Anderson on When the Meganovel Shrank - The 00's Issue -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/arts/all/aughts/62514/comments.html#ixzz0ZMG2WqWc

Dave Eggers, Passionate About Print

The Los Angeles Times ran piece today on how David Eggers is trying to revive the newspaper with a grand experiment -- a beautiful, big one-off paperm called San Francisco Panorama, that you have to step up and pay for ($16.) You have to read the piece -- and the paper. It's a perfect reminder of how one passionate person can change the world.

Writing and Parenting

A writer friend of mine had a baby this year, and she is struggling to balance writing, parenting and marriage. I struggle with the same thing, as so many of us do, but when I read my friend's letter, I realized how completely out of the woods I am. My kids, after all, get up and get dressed by themselves and make themselves breakfast and go to school until about 4:00 every day. One of them even drives, for heaven's sake. My parenting is crammed into the margins of the day, now -- a drama over a middle school mean girl that bubbles up at 11:00 p.m., a crisis over a college essay that coincides exactly with a deadline of my own on a Friday afternoon, a snarky attitude at 7 a.m. that has to be nipped in the bud before it is allowed to bloom. It's all relatively manageable stuff. I have giant swaths of every day in which I get to write. I am home free.

At first I thought I couldn't be much help to my friend. What good would it do, after all, to say, "Oh yeah -- ha! ha! -- I remember those shaky years." Then I realized that it would, in fact, do a world of good just to know that someone had been there before and survived it. That's one of the main reasons I love books: books allow us to experience something we haven't experienced before, and to realize that we're not alone, and to believe that we, too, will make it through. That's the power of storytelling.

So I told my friend my tale. I recounted how I used to cry all the time, and how I thought I was losing my mind, and how I was so desperate to write something -- anything! -- that I wrote a really bad book. I told her how many things I do badly (cooking, housecleaning, gardening, socializing, hair care -- the list is endless) so that I can be a good wife, mother and writer. I told her how much Barney my kids used to watch so that I could do a little work of my own, and how I wrote the last lines of one of my books while sitting on the floor outside the bathroom where my kids were playing prune-like in the bathrub. I told her to keep breathing because it would get better -- not soon, but one day.

And she wrote back and said, "You saved my life today. I read your email three times." Our stories matter. That's why we have to keep doing what we're doing.