by Janis Patterson
One of the questions authors are asked the most is “Where do
you find your ideas?” - as if ideas were rare and wondrous things as difficult
to discover as flawless emeralds. As far as I and most of the writers I know
are concerned, there are fewer questions more maddening.
As if one has to ‘find’ ideas. They find us, as ubiquitous
as mosquitoes during a lake holiday, and sometimes just about as annoying. For
example : you’re working happily on a sophisticated big city humorous mystery,
when all of a sudden the sight of an axe in a hardware store brings up a flash
of inspiration for a dark and noir-ish story about a suburban serial killer. It
lurks at the edge of your consciousness, waiting to leap on every unguarded moment
with yet another character or plot twist.
The sleuth you’re trying to write is an urbane,
wise-cracking former male model who speaks four languages and not only knows
but actually cares about the difference between white tie and black tie evening
wear. (Sigh) The sleuth who is trying to creep into your mind is a
wise-cracking suburban mom who hates soccer, has a daughter mad for ballet and
who, through her knowledge of some arcane middle-class suburban pastime,
deduces the killer who has been decimating the neighborhood.
Finally to propitiate the annoying creature you take a few
precious hours to make some notes, jot down an idea or two, scrape together the
bare bones of an outline and file the results into your bulging Ideas file.
(You do keep an Ideas file, don’t you? I have for years. Mine is now roughly
the size of Rhode Island.) The only problem is, when you decide the suburban
mom has to have a garden, there is the flicker of an idea about a well-known
television writer who loves to raise poisonous plants and his encyclopedic
knowledge allows him to solve crimes as there is suddenly an epidemic of
poisonings on the set of a controversial new series...
See how insidious this is? Before long you’re doing nothing
but making notes about possible story ideas while your sophisticated and urbane
city detective languishes somewhere in black tie (appropriate to the occasion,
of course) waiting for you to come back to him. Ideas are everywhere, and
catching them can take over your life.
Now, as we must never forget, I will repeat my mantra – an
idea is not a plot. An Idea Is Not A Plot. Repeat that three times every day
before you sit down to write. An idea is a situation, a frame, a slice of a
singular moment in time. For a successful book, you need hundreds of ideas, and
you need to be able to mesh them together seamlessly to provide a workable
story. That part is work. Fielding a couple of the bazillions of ideas that
flash by you every minute is not.
For the record, my second-most-disliked question is when
some bright-eyed naif comes bouncing
up (for some reason this is usually a middle-aged male at a cocktail party) and
says with the utmost generosity of a Lord Bountiful, “I’ve a wonderful idea for
a book – why don’t I tell it to you so you can write the book and we’ll split
the money.” If it weren’t so maddening it would be funny to see their faces
fall with disbelief when I tell them that ideas are literally everywhere and
why would a writer need or even want to borrow ideas when there are more around
for free than we could ever even make notes on in our lifetime? Let alone that
the writing of the book is the work part, not finding an idea or two.
There have been a few, foolish ones who forge ahead and tell
me their idea anyway, apparently convinced that once I hear it I will find it
so irresistible and wonderful that I will fall all over myself begging to write
it. Huh. Usually this idea is either an improbable farrago of wish-fulfillment
or a twisted re-hash of some recent television show. Sigh. Unfortunately, there
is nothing in any etiquette book about how to handle this situation and
stabbing the innocent but tenacious offender with a cocktail pick is frowned
upon. (I say that from sad experience...)
See the problem? It’s not that we have to stalk ideas – it’s
that ideas stalk us, continually battering at the gates of our mind until we
acknowledge their existence, which diffuses our focus. Perhaps a friend of mine
said it best : “It’s not the idea; it’s what you do with it.”
What we do with it – writing the story itself – is the
important part.
UPDATE :
Well, my one book release every two weeks from 30 June-30
October publishing blitz ends in a scant handful of days, and am I glad! It was
madness to undertake such an insane schedule. What surprised me was how many
people – including many writers, who should know better – asked disbelievingly
if I were writing a new book every two weeks. Yes, two of the releases were
new, but they were completed and edited before this all began, and all the rest
backlist books whose rights had reverted to me. Still, it was all a tremendous
amount of work that distracted me from everything else in life. Luckily The
Husband likes frozen pizza, but he will be glad when I have the energy to get
back in the kitchen, though the local restaurants will regret the loss of our all-too-regular
patronage. In a way I too will be glad, for the business end of publishing has
been so all-encompassing that my writing has been ruthlessly shoved aside. Only
recently, as the publishing obligations started to decrease have I been able to
approach the computer creatively. Jump-starting my brain and switching from the
mind-set of publisher to author was more difficult than anticipated, but slowly
the words have been creeping from my fingertips and once again I am feeling the
radiant glow of creation. It’s about time.
The ultimate book in the blitz is a re-release of a
traditional Regency romance entitled LACEY. It’s a fun book about three couples
finding love in spite of societal conventions, meddling relatives and past
hurts. Like all the rest, it has been re-edited, re-formatted, given a
beautiful new cover and is available in both electronic and paper versions.
Now I am going to rest for a while, at least until the siren
whisper of ideas becomes too strong in my ear!
