Saturday 8 May 2010

Where Did That Idea Come From? And Why Today?

Ideas are strange. You can be sitting around for four months desperately trying to force something out, and nothing happens. And then on a random Tuesday morning you have an idea about a German Politician who is mistaken for a waste disposal expert; and you realize it's GENIUS. You begin writing immediately.

Why does it happen on a random Tuesday? And why does it happen when you were preparing to spend the day watching 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'? There are many reasons where the source of ideas are obvious. Mainly, if you are someone who is social, or meets new people a lot, or goes to interesting places. But if you're me, it's more likely you'll spend four days sitting at home eating cereal. In which case, naturally - creative ideas are hard to come by. But why, 3.2 days into 4 days of nothingness do you suddenly, without explanation, get the sudden idea for a thriller-mystery about the kidnapping of the entire staff of the Coca Cola Company.

I am beginning to find the fact I have ideas more interesting than the ideas themselves. I sit there thinking 'wow, all I was doing was buying books on eBay and talking to Natalie on Facebook when suddenly I got an idea about an environmental activist who gets killed by an angry bunch of wild animals.' Why now? How did that happen?

It's very strange. The other morning, after an extended period of no-interesting-writing-happening-at-all, I wrote a short 16 page script in about forty minutes. And it's unlike anything I've written before (although it uses the same 26 alphabet letters). Where it came from, I have no idea.

So; where do these ideas come from? If we find out, can we go there more often? Also, if my mind knows instantly whether an idea is great or terrible, then why do I spend so long, so often, trying to work on the really bad ones?

Care to share?

1 comment:

  1. One of my great issues is that my mind has no filter between ideas that are great and ideas that are terrible, it just spits out whatever it wants. Hence, my need for a blog. If I didn't write it down and let others deal with it, I'd spend the whole day pondering over what is ultimately just a dumb thought.

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