Any one story is made up of many ideas. I keep track of all of my setting, character, and plot ideas, and I allow them to coalesce. Only then can I decide where to begin. But where do these ideas come from? How can you reliably come up with story aspects that excite you and are worth exploring? The answer isn’t easy.
The more you try to force creativity, the more creativity retreats. Inspiration can be coaxed out and encouraged, certainly. But to sit down and try to summon worthy ideas to the mind is a futile effort. If you remain open to the appearance of ideas, however, you may notice when one peeks their head above the surface of the waves.
Ideas come from experience. The sound, the noise of the world. All of the information that passes through us on a daily basis affects our thoughts to some degree. Therefore, in an increasingly noisy world where every media outlet seeks to capture every second of our attention, we must be mindful of which sounds we listen to. Ray Bradbury encourages the pursuit of ones loves and “an ever-roaming curiosity” in order to feed one’s muse.
As Natalie Goldberg says, though, “it takes a while for our experience to sift through our consciousness.” Our experiences, then, must be given time to compost. After sufficient time, distance, and reflection, we achieve a perspective from which you can write about those experiences.
Creativity works this way for me. I immerse myself in sound, which is no difficult task. The hard part is choosing the right ones. The right people, the right environments, the right movies, plays, books, podcasts. Social media accounts, even. If the noise of Instagram and Twitter are inescapable for you, you may as well curate the apps so that they benefit you in some way.
What I find far, far harder, though, is achieving silence. The world seems to work against our entering silence. Many of our minds, my own included, have been programmed to seek the instant hit of dopamine provided by our phones. Always in our pocket, always just a few taps away.
But the silent space is sacred. For this is the space where I might spot an idea, that rare and delicate creature, from my periphery. Moments of silence can come in all forms. It doesn’t just need to look like meditation, though I have found success there. It can look like sitting in a waiting room without looking at my phone. Studying the artwork on the walls and letting my mind wander. It can look like going to the grocery store alone in sweatpants. It can look like a drive home without music, whether that drive is five minutes or five hours.
Silence can be big, small, long, or short. No matter what form it takes, value can be found. As long as you’re paying attention.
Find time for the noise. Find time to get away from it. But most of all, and I would do well to be reminded of this every day, don’t try to force the experience. If try to force it, then you’re certain to miss even a whale of an idea.
– AJG
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