As writers and storytellers, we spend a great deal of time in our own heads. We’re like tigers pacing the inside of our cages, or madmen pinballing between the walls of our padded room. We do so much work in our own mental head-caves, trying to create light and meaning out of the darkness, and nobody really talks about that. A lot of people online talk about writing — myself among them, of course — but it’s not very often I see talk devoted toward all the goddamn thinking we do.
It occurs to me now that it’s a damn worthy topic.
Shit, long before you start banging out an outline or a treatment, long before you start barfing up ink on the page or the screen, you sit and… well, you let the story tumble around inside your head. Characters. Plot. Odd ideas that don’t play together (yet). Metaphors that live in the space between sizzling spark plug synapses. The storyteller’s internal psychic life is the life is a little kid, right? It’s like your brain is a child. Bringing toys together, seeing which ones play well together, seeing which ones literally fit together. LEGO and GI Joe and some Silly Putty and a cheap plastic unicorn and Mommy’s hairbrush and Daddy’s Browning Buck Mark .22. target pistol and a roll of duct tape and so on and so forth.
But nobody really tells you how to do that.
Now, the easy argument — and this is true to a point — is that nobody can tell you how to think. You already know how to do that. And you can never really know how anybody else thinks because you’ll never really be inside their head (unless you have some bizarre-o psychic ability, which is why I wear a tinfoil top hat just in case ha ha ha foiled you, get it, foiled you? shut up). Just the same, I think it’s worth talking about what goes on upstairs. How you do it. How you can do it better, or at least differently.
So, I’m going to start a series of short(er) blog posts here at Ye Olde Websyte, thinking about thinking, talking about thinking, and thinking about talking about thinking. Or something. I just got a nosebleed.
Let’s start today about how you prime yourself for all that thinkery-doo.
I mean, the great thing about being a storyteller is you carry around atop your shoulders a space that is equal parts bookstore and theater and video game console and evolving drug trip on exotic hallucinogens. Right? It’s why we’re never really bored. Because whether we’re sitting at the DMV or waiting in line at the bank or sitting on Death Row for our inevitable execution, we have a big story-machine betwixt our ears.
But just the same, you can, I think, foster and encourage your brain to do what it needs to do.
The easiest thing is to perform tasks — Think-Time Tasks — where you find your mind more easily wanders afield. Right? Ideally such tasks are places that bring with them a sense of rote maneuvering, of routine, offering something almost like sensory deprivation. Mowing the lawn. Taking a walk. Taking a shower. Methodically dismembering a corpse you stole from the graveyard. Activities that allow you to… zone out, to retreat comfortably into your own head. The bank line, the DMV, those are less comfortable retreats because, well, they’re shitty. The DMV is a Sisyphean hell-mountain. The bank is dull droll doldroms (say that 5,782 times fast). But actions you choose, actions in which you find comfort, those open the doors to perception without you having to jimmy the lock.
You also have as an option certain… chemical enhancements. Caffeine does wonders for getting the old synapses to fire. Maybe a little chocolate here and there. And, of course, there’s the idea that a little bit of alcohol can help foment your creativity (from this article: “Sudden, intuitive insights into tricky word-association problems occurred more frequently when men were intoxicated but not legally drunk…” and “A moderate alcoholic high loosens a person’s focus of attention, making it easier to find connections among remotely related ideas…”). You could also quaff some hallucinogenic potion and battle the Monkey King for supremacy over his golden pile of dung, but that might be taking it a mile too far.
Also: you can set your brain like a slow-cooker. No, really. Throw in some ideas and questions — like so many chopped onions and carrots and hunks of raw meat — and then go to bed. Don’t try to think about it. Do something else. Let your brain wander elsewhere. In the morning, you might be surprised to find the simmering pot that is your brainpan now contains a delicious umami broth of insight and possibility where before you had only the raw ingredients.
So, the question for this first “thinking about stories” post is — how do you foster and encourage your brain to do the weird mental loop-de-loops necessary to noodle on stories?
What’s your secret?
Jen says:
My secret depends on if I’m doing “slow cooker” style thinking or “stir fry” thinking.
If it’s “stir fry”, the story file is open and ready. Sitting at my computer I’ll let my mind wander, but not too far, playing Pinball or Snood, something pattern based and repetitive that I don’t have to think about, just react to.
“Slow cooker” style can take an evening, or days, or a week. It involves more occasional and general thinking, about lofty things like motif and mood, and what happens in the middle and the end. It involves playing with and training with the dog, housework (well, not if I can avoid it), reading other peoples’ already published and paid for works, and listening to music. With the longer simmer, the actual writing occurs when sentences start bubbling fully formed, to the top.
May 9, 2012 — 12:56 AM
Kaitlin Branch says:
Oh wow, great idea for a post. I took up running a few years ago and find that sometimes that does a fabulous job of letting my brain simmer while I exhaust the bits of me that don’t want to sit down and write. I also teach kindergarten, and occasionally the ‘writing stuff’ actually becomes the convenient hiding hole rather than the destination of a journey, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. Brain waves often happen in the shower, too.
Coffee and Alcohol are usually saved for the actual writing process.
May 9, 2012 — 2:50 AM
R.J.Keith says:
There is something to be said for having a shitty job that pays the bills. It doesn’t take much mental power to do what I do (waitress/catering) so it leaves me free to think of pretty much whatever I want. Which, 99% of the time is my book. Music is a big part, too. Something in a song catches my attention and then, ZOOM, I’m off!
Walking the dog or taking a shower allows slower, ponderous thinking because I’m at home and comfortable. I can try and flesh out the plot while pen and paper are handy instead of at work where I don’t have easy access, and I have to try and remember what I thought of the whole day through until I do have access to writing materials.
May 9, 2012 — 3:54 AM
James Clark says:
This is a subject that has actually been addressed separately by Brian Eno, of Roxy Music fame.
He produced a deck of cards, each with questions or comments written on them, designed to kind of jog the process of creation when it becomes snarled up or when new ingredients are needed. These are called Oblique Strategies and mostly arose from his own observations about his own creative process.
As for the slow cooker, Jen’s comment about repetetiveness is something i can relate to. Housework, wordsearches, sudoku, all help out.
May 9, 2012 — 4:07 AM
Bill Dezell says:
My job has a 2 to 5 hour block where my only “duty” is to be awake in case something happens, and listening to the owner talk about stuff from 2 to 200 minutes a night. My manager said if he worked my shift, he’d play HALO. That’s when I do the bulk of my writing (and it’s now).
My drive is about 45 minutes of freeway, each way. So there is plenty of time for thinking there, but for some reason, I get the bulk of my ideas in the shower.
I can’t just sit and think. I have to have some sort of physical activity, but not one that requires a really active sort of participation. Felicia Day said she does her best thinking while playing tower defense games. I can’t do that, because it’s all mental activity. I can’t split out the creative part of my brain from the “place crossbow tower here” part. I also can’t work on my writing while walking the dogs because I have to constantly be alert for cyclists and things that aren’t food that the little dumb one has in his mouth.
But the shower… Everything in there is more or less automatic. There’s no mental aspect apart from not facing the shower head with my mouth open, and even that seems to correct itself quickly enough if I forget.
May 9, 2012 — 4:27 AM
Snellopy says:
When I’m doing end of year reports on my kids, I always prefer having a couple of beers or a shot or two to get the words flowing well.
For stories, it always takes me ages to fall asleep, and I wake up before my wife, so I do my planning then. Anything that really strikes my fancy I’ll jot down as a note on my phone. When I get to do the actual writing is in down-time at work, when the kids are doing drill and practice, or something that needs little supervision apart from making sure they’re on task and not stabbing someone with a pencil. That means its normally had a few evenings to be worked over before I sleep or while I am asleep.
May 9, 2012 — 5:35 AM
Aiwevanya says:
I ask myself questions, lots and lots and lots and…. you get the picture…. of questions and more importantly I don’t try too hard to answer them, sometimes the answer is obvious of course, but if it isn’t then ‘I don’t know yet’ is a perfectly acceptable response. Sooner or later some kind of deep magic occurs whereby the questions reach this critical mass and start being answers to one another.
Either that or the questions start grouping together into things that clearly have the same answer if only I had the slightest idea what it was and when enough of them do that then it’s like one of those pictures that can be two faces or a vase and the perspective shifts and suddenly there is the one big answer that fixes everything. I love that moment.
May 9, 2012 — 6:52 AM
Shane Dodd says:
I just blogged about this after having read an article from American Scientific concerning the brain entitled “Sleepy Brains Think More Freely.” It talks about how lessened inhibition while thinking often triggers creativity since you aren’t confined by the more inhibitive processes your brain usually triggers during the waking hours.
For me, right after I get up in the morning till the time my coffee really kicks in is good. I work in technical support for a product that requires intense focus and no creativity at all. It is literally all ones and zeroes, input and output. Once the coffee kicks in of a morning, I am usually neck deep in this. By that time, any creative processes are back burnered and rarely thought of again until either I go home (assuming I haven’t had a day that makes me take it home with me) or I go to bed. The couple of hours right before bed are good as well. I am less likely to be critical of my ideas and just let them flow onto the screen or paper. If need be, I will occasionally have a beer or some wine to loosen up, but there is a fine line there. To much of a good thing, and I am dozing on the couch or stumbling through the lawn babbling about things that make my neighbors question my sanity. (Drunk, with sword in hand, trimming the bushes, generally doesn’t make a good impression with the neighbors.) Also, secluding myself in the cold, dark basement, where I can’t see the light of day and have enough computer equipment to create a white noise heaven helps. Combine that with a white board and I am off to the races. Thinking about it now, it comes down to time (late evening, early morning), space (dark, cool, and sonically soothing), and lessened inhibitions (alcohol induced if need be). If I combine all three of these, I am good for 3000 to 5000 words in a single sitting, of which I probably keep half.
I also do technical writing for work. I have learned that the pump of stories can be primed, even doing this. Doing this causes me to write with one side of my brain and get it moving and working. Once I am done with it for the day, I find that I can then slide over and feed the beast of creativity and actually work more efficiently. Not sure why this is, other than I have been writing all day and to continue doing so in any way, shape, or form is not nearly as difficult.
Done babbling, off to flog the ones and zeroes.
May 9, 2012 — 7:23 AM
Bill Dowis says:
I wrote a blog post sort of about this a couple months ago…. I like to do a meditation style kind of guided visualization thing. Turn off all distractions. Maybe open a window and let a cool breeze blow in. Then I sit back or lay down and kind of drift into the space between sleep and consciousness all the while thinking about my story. Sometimes the story plays out in front of me and I have some great scenes going without doing any work at all.
May 9, 2012 — 8:16 AM
Lauren B. says:
I know that my imagination gets more active when I’m reading a book. Not during reading, but at other random times my mind will assail me with random fragments of ideas, moreso than if I’m in a period where I’m not reading anything. Reading just keeps that part of my brain more awake, I think.
Other than that, I tend to get my better story revelations when I’m in passive mode — the shower, driving/riding the bus, doing the dishes, etc. I’ll also get them right before bed, so I make sure to keep a notebook on the nightstand.
May 9, 2012 — 8:23 AM
Jessica Meats says:
There are three main thinking times for me. One is when I go to bed. I lie in the dark and let story ideas bubble.
The second is walking to and from work (or other places, like walking to the supermarket). My mind is free to wander around plot lines.
The third is playing Kingdom of Loathing. The only drawback is if there’s some new change or seasonal special area because then I’ll get distracted by reading all the appalling puns. But most of the time, I can go into the giant’s castle, hit the attack button, hit adventure again, hit attack, hit adventure again, and on and on until I run out of adventures for the day. You don’t have to focus and the story starts flowing.
Of course, you also get story ideas that randomly appear with no warning right when you’re supposed to be doing something important.
May 9, 2012 — 8:26 AM
Steve McCann says:
The problem with alcohol is that it makes really stupid ideas seem great. That applies to story ideas as well as insulting the former Navy SEAL at the end of the bar. I’m afraid booze has only given me a warm happy in my tummy followed by a painful pounding in my head.
May 9, 2012 — 8:50 AM
Mike Zimmerman says:
I find I dream in story cliches. Any idea how much that sucks?
May 9, 2012 — 9:00 AM
Gemma Buxton says:
I find reading helps smooth out the ideas in my head. Non-fiction is really helpful because you see the way that things have happened in the real world, which helps keep story lines believable. There’s nothing worse than reading a story and being pulled out of it because the character motivations don’t line up with the situation they’re in, or the chain of events seems contrived.
Non-fiction is also a great idea-giver. The world of history is filled with such interesting characters, and you can see how their personalities influence their decisions etc. I really think that studying, or at least paying attention to history (the more recent the more applicable prehaps?) can give great aids to help you become a better storyteller.
May 9, 2012 — 9:25 AM
Chris Stonebender says:
Good timing. I just built a white board and made a notebook and they’re THE NEW METHOD. For me. Carry the notebook around for everything—block-printed so I remember it’s awesome and don’t lose it—and then the whiteboard takes care of the messy shotgun-to-the-back-wall stuff.
http://veryeasychoices.com/2012/05/09/thinking-about-story/
Go there if you want to see the pictures of both things. They’re pretty much my favorite ever.
May 9, 2012 — 9:58 AM
Josef K. says:
This is great timing, I was just tweeting about what inspired several stories I wrote. For me it’s almost entirely about music. Location, activity, or circumstances rarely matter, although more often than not its while travelling, walking, driving, train riding, when the brain isn’t taxed by much more than “keep moving thatta way.” I’ll hear a song, or just a fragment of a lyric, and it’s almost instantaneous, like a teleporter accident. Suddenly the idea is just there, bloody, raw, but mostly formed, with a fetal plot and a few characters. Sometimes I know the characters names in that moment, and how to spell them, all the gritty details. Usually that never changes. Often I’ll get the first or last lines of text in that flash, or at least the feeling of the beginning and end.
Then I’ll put the song or album on repeat and toss the bloody lump in the rock polishing centrifuge. Sometimes it breaks a part and must be golem’ed back together in a new shape, but more often than not it keeps the original shape. I find other broken limbs from previous aborted attempts and see what will graft safely to the new monster.
Usually it takes an hour or three until I’m ready to sit down and write, and then everything is likely to change again, especially if I thought I already knew what the ending was going to be.
May 9, 2012 — 10:01 AM
Theresa Meyers says:
Part of the reason sleep or mindless activity help get your story juices flowing is because you are in more in your subconscious mind, which is the storage house in our brains for memory, emotion, feelings and creativity. My mom was a certified medical hypnotherapist who specialized in helping writers through writer’s block and did work for some of the biggest houses in NY with their “stuck” writers.
She did a two-year research study on the hypnotic affect of the written word and came up with some really interesting conclusions. First, if you want to get in the “zone” you need to be in a light hypnotic state. We go in and out of them every day–like when you are driving somewhere and time just seems to fly by and you’re not sure how you made it there, but you did. We also go into one right before we go to sleep and at different periods during the sleep cycle.
Some ways she suggested triggering this light hypnotic state were to do the same muscle memory activity right before you sit down to write (like light a candle, walk around your chair three times counter clockwise, play a game of solitaire, go on a walk on the same route, take a shower, close your eyes and count backwards from twenty to one slowly–whatever works for you, as long as you do it consistently every time you write.) Also writing in the same place helps. Why? The body’s muscle memory can trigger the subconscious faster.
Scent is also a good trigger. Scientific studies have shown that when students study with a particular scent beneath their nose (like a swab of peppermint oil) then do it again before a test, they have a far higher retention rate of the information they studied. Same thing works for writers. One trick I’ve come to use is a particular scent of candle for each book. I only burn it when writing on that book. Scent is one of the most powerful memory triggers you have. For example, if I say woodsmoke, you probably have an instant idea of what that smells like and the first or last time you were near a wood fire.
Other things she said worked is (if you are the kind of person who can listen to music) create a soundtrack for yourself. I’ve tried that too.
But to trigger the creativity – sometimes I find going back to my journalism roots and interviewing the character nets me some interesting and juicy twists and turns in a story. Especially if you interview them like they are on TMZ or something and your a rag mag writer.
LOVE using non-fiction newspaper articles to trigger story ideas as well. Whenever I come across something that triggers an idea (even if I’m on deadline) I’ll capture whatever I can of that idea on an idea sheet (characters, title, blurb, rough outline – whatever the spark was) and then tuck it into a story trunk for later. That way my brain is appeased that I paid attention to the idea (so it’ll give me more) but I’m not totally getting away from the work at hand.
Three biggest helpers: What if? What then? Why? Sometimes just asking those can get you going in a totally new direction than you planned in a story.
One other thing. Look at the story from a totally different character. Every character thinks he or she is the center of the story, so what’s their take on it? You find out some really twisted stuff from secondary characters sometimes.
Great post, Chuck!
May 9, 2012 — 10:13 AM
Ellie Ann says:
Geez, well done. That was so well worded. You put into neat, shiny words what I’ve never been able to express about thinking.
I’m a housewife. When I do my chores, I think. I don’t think I would’ve become a writer if not for all the mundane tasks that keep my hands busy and take no mental space. It opens my mind to create. I write entire scenes in my head, to be poured out on the keyboard the next morning before the kids wake up. Ironing , vacuuming, dusting, folding, washing walls, and cooking = creating time. Also, sometimes when I run, scenes and words and people come to me, but I usually just like to listen to the slap of my feet on the pavement.
May 9, 2012 — 10:20 AM
Bronson O'Quinn says:
I just force myself to sit and let the brain juices bleed into my ink until they’re all dried up. It took a lot of discipline to force myself to do it, and I was afraid it’d cause a Ludovico style response. Fortunately, that didn’t happen and my gulliver doesn’t wretch at the idea.
The best part, though, is that what I think is a few droplets of that creative brain juice turns out to be a bottomless inkwell. Just need a kick start, like any other physical process, I guess.
May 9, 2012 — 10:25 AM
Curtis Edmonds says:
The one word of this I don’t much like, and that I would change in a violent and abusive manner if I could, is “choose.” I don’t get to choose a lot of the tasks I undertake; they choose me. The desperately hard part for me, as a writer with a full-time job and two small children, is finding vacant time to write and to think about writing. If I could choose (there’s that word again) to immerse myself in some pleasant task to kindle the creative spark, I would. But I cannot, or at least not often.
So if I couldn’t choose my activities, I could choose to make the time spent in those activities more useful. I turned off my radio on my commute and spent the time interviewing characters in my head and developing plot points. I went over dialogue in my head while getting ready to sleep. I killed off a character in the shower.
Yes. It would be nice to have the luxury of choice, to be able to go out and mow the lawn (it needs it after all the rain) and think up a mega-huge story with thunderbolts and pit vipers and giant marshmallow men. But that will not happen today, and until it does, I have to work with what I got.
May 9, 2012 — 10:41 AM
Margaret McGriff says:
Music triggers my brain each and every time. All I have to do is put on my headphones and listen and brain thinks of all sorts of things! I like the fact that my day job involves being at my desk all day so that’s when I do most of my thinking and listening to music. Just have to make sure i have paper handy so I can write down everything before I forget it!
May 9, 2012 — 11:03 AM
Christopher Meyer says:
I guess I’ve always had an active mind. As a kid I’d create whole Lego towns/settings where my characters would interact (I pioneered ship-boarding tactics with my red-uniformed marines against the “bad guys”, and many a war was fought and won in Legoland) and create stories from there. My Star Wars figurines were even subjected to non-canon play – Stormtroopers were good guys, normally drop troops deploying from the Millenium Falcon, Luke Skywalker in red Imperial bodyguard armor was their leader, certain rebel figurines were commandoes, but others were the enemy.
Usually I draw from two groupings: (1) My love of science fictiction, actual science, and a desire to travel in space; and (2) My life experience in contracting, project management, and other things.
These two groupings mix together to help form the novel, novella, and short stories I’ve written and self-published to date. The process isn’t anything special. I sit and think about it, or an idea hits me, I scribble some stuff, I start writing, I scribble more, I write/delete and rewrite.
I draw from other things, too. Arnold Schwarzenegger has always been one of my Heroes, and many of his movies inspired characters, settings, or some small aspect of a story. ’80s action movies in general were the springboard of many of my ideas when I was younger.
Now Robert Heinlein, Battletech, Warhammer 40K, and new technologies fuel my imagination and stories.
But don’t go in my brain…it’s a roiling miasma of Chaos. 🙂
May 9, 2012 — 11:09 AM
Jon Stoffel says:
My writing brain is like an obnoxious terrier: it needs attention, it must be fed (coffee) immediately when it so desires, and if I want it to calm down and accomplish anything, I have to take it on walks.
A combination of exercise, fresh air, and new surroundings draws insights to the surface. My wife will often go to keep me on task and give another perspective. These half hour walks clean up the knots and tangles I’ve acquired in the trenches.
I attempt the slow-cooker method before bed (with some measure of success), but many nights, after chopping the ingredients and tossing them in the pot, I try to set it on Low, but the damn thing clicks over to Nuclear Meltdown and boils over. I lay in bed, wide eyed, as the ideas gush and churn, then sigh and grab something to note them.
My wife is very patient and forgiving.
May 9, 2012 — 11:53 AM
Stan R. Mitchell says:
“So, the question for this first “thinking about stories” post is — how do you foster and encourage your brain to do the weird mental loop-de-loops necessary to noodle on stories? What’s your secret?”
I don’t have a secret. I just have weird thoughts occur from what should be normal situations.
For instance, the other day, I was helping an intern, and as I stood over her shoulder to look at her monitor, I slightly stepped on her purse. I said, “Sorry,” reached down to move it over some, and it weighed a ton. And the cover was unclasped.
Immediately, I imagined she had a pistol in there, was an undercover agent from a gov’t organization, and had been sent to kill me. Then my mind raced for the next three hours, took me out of the current situation, and imagined dozens of possibilities… Such as, what if my company was actually a mob organization. And she had no idea whether I knew there was a pistol in there… And from that, I had a crazy story idea that I DIDN’T want or need. (Wrapping up my next novel, and have my third novel 3/4 done; I really don’t need this shit enticing me like some half-clothed model in a bikini…)
But it does, baby. It does, and it’s taken a pro like you, Chuck, to teach me to be disciplined, file that shit away, and finish what you’re working on.
May 9, 2012 — 12:04 PM
churnage says:
Write every day. That’s what I try to do, even if it’s crap. Sometimes it takes a lot of fertilizer to grow a story/screenplay/poem.
Play with words. Have fun writing. I try to come up with 3-5 phrases on my drive to work that are the product of synaptic randomness and serendipity.
Keep going. Slog through the filth and much and dead stories and rotting corpses to get where you need to be.
May 9, 2012 — 1:37 PM
Jackie says:
I talk to myself a lot. It kind of bums out my roomate.
May 9, 2012 — 2:56 PM
Kat Clements says:
I love it when the slow cooker part of my brain solves a plot problem I’ve been mulling over for a while. I’ll try to actively work through a problem, or sometimes I don’t even realize I have a problem, and then, days, weeks, even months later, something will pop into my head yelling, “Eureka! This is how you solve it!” or “Hey, this way works soooo much better!” The stir fry method doesn’t seem to work quite as well for me. At least, I haven’t tried it in a while.
Exercising helps get my brain going, as does Dr. Pepper, sometimes chocolate, watching or reading a movie or book that I really, really love, and listening to music while driving. Music and driving is the best for working on stories because different songs can call different images to mind, different scenes, characters, even entire story ideas! I try to make a note when a song evokes a particular feeling.
I really like this entry about the thinking writers do, and I look forward to reading more on the same theme!
May 9, 2012 — 4:40 PM
ganymeder says:
I do lots of things. I think people, storytellers or not, get ideas all the time. They just forget them or don’t see the potential. So whenever something occurs to me, I write it down on a notebook app on my phone. Talking to other writers always gives me ideas, and lots of time I”ll get inspiration from an interesting news post or something.
Also, I’m a firm believer in the creative power of napping.
I’ll jot things down, think about the idea a bit, then forget about it for a day or two. When I come back to it, I almost always have better ideas about where the story’s going.
May 9, 2012 — 6:47 PM
Lisa Pedersen says:
I watch a lot of porn.
May 9, 2012 — 7:28 PM
T.J. Janneff says:
http://writerpie.tumblr.com/post/22743662992/thinking-about-thinking Have at ye! You’ve inspired a whole blog post, Wendiggy. *totally amused*
May 9, 2012 — 7:38 PM
J.M. Dow says:
Ah, thinking about thinking…a little METACOGNITION, eh?
One thing that hasn’t seemed to work for me that well is the “slow cooker method.” I often have questions, let my mind wander, but it never comes back. I’ve never been good at reigning the old noodle in and having it do what I want.
All the same, I saw that same alcohol study. Since the human brain actual has very similar effects on it when it’s tired as it does when it’s affected by alcohol, that might explain why I’m more creative in the evenings/nights before bed. It explains why 12:00 AM to 3:00 AM seems to be my magic hour–I’m half drunk off of lack of sleep.
I look forward to reading more of your posts to see what you have to say about this whole “thinking” thing. Who knows? If this thing takes off, maybe more people will try it!
J.M.
May 9, 2012 — 9:23 PM
auroranibley says:
Somebody up there somewhere mentioned Kingdom of Loathing. It’s a great game, first of all, but it has a great little mindless bonus in it, ifn you’re interested–one of the mini-games available within the game is basically a coin-flip gambling table, and your stakes are just game-money, so no risk of losing your house. Whenever I write, I have this game going on in the background, so when I’m stuck for a word, or a phrase, or just, “hey, what happens next?” I switch over to watch numbers going up and down, and place meaningless bets that keep me occupied (I do still CARE whether I win), but have no skill requirement whatsoever, and so don’t actually require my attention.
It would be super awesome if I could come up with killer ideas while doing housework, but alas, none yet.
May 9, 2012 — 10:50 PM
Anna Lewis says:
I’ve discovered recently that how my muse percolates varies depending on what type of story I’m working on. If I’m cranking out a short (for, say, a TM challenge), I just ponder the prompt for a little bit and something usually pops right in. Takes me an hour or two to get it down, then I obsessively tinker with word choices until I get sick of looking at it.
For messing around with the long fiction projects it’s all different. I’ve got so much research into this stuff now that sometimes re-reading a pertinent book (or even just a section) will suffice to spark something up. A lot of the time I talk out issues to myself in the car on my commute. The slow-cooker method works but not often; I’m really good at thinking myself into insomnia. Since beginning the pirate story (2008) , though, I’ve discovered that I focus *really* well after about 11p, so I frequently stay up stupid-late (1-2a) on work nights and have pulled several all-nighters this year already on days off.
Of course, when I started the pirate story my writing partner was all fired up too and the both of us could crank out ridiculous piles of inspiration in a few dedicated hours of Messenger chat.
May 10, 2012 — 12:39 AM
Amanda says:
I like the slow-cooker approach. But when I’m facing down a word count, I’ll often space down a few lines, then start writing noodly stuff like this:
“So what’s next? Molly decides to do xyz, and Frank has an opinion about this. Wait, why would Molly do that? That’s stupid. Molly would totally do abc instead. Where does that leave this other piece of plot?”
Then that’ll turn into a little mini-outline that keeps me on track for the next few paragraphs. I find that when I ask questions, answers pop into my head. Of course, this isn’t terribly organized, so it’s sometimes difficult to figure out where I wrote down that really cool idea that I could totally use right now.
May 10, 2012 — 12:33 PM
Lena says:
Chocolate is my secret. Always manages to stimulate my brain
May 10, 2012 — 12:39 PM
Sparky says:
I favor the rote activity route to get my brain cooking. I used to have a job that allowed that but unfortunately (for this very particular case) I moved onto something less endlessly depressing that requires I use my mind. The biggest activities with me are either working on my manual dexterity (flipping cards, rolling coins across the knuckles) or polishing my boots.
Boot? Really? What? you ask. And rightly so. Well I will tell you: once you have the basics down proper bootblacking is largely a task of patience and repeating the same motions ad nauseum as you polish, shine, clean, wipe down, wait and polish again. It is wonderfully meditative. And I also get shiny-ass boots out of the deal.
I also use caffeine. Sometimes in unhealthily large doses.
May 10, 2012 — 2:58 PM
oldestgenxer says:
This is the part that makes us writers. This is the creativity. Everyone has their own “thing,” but as far people that *don’t* create are concerned–it’s magic. I can’t even describe how it works for me, but sometimes I feel like I have several dozen monkeys with word processors sitting in a room in my brain. It’s a collaborative effort.
It’s become more cogent for me doing the flash fiction challenges. i don’t just grab the keyboard and bang away–I wait until something becomes clear…the character, the story, or the theme. Either one of those. That’s the magic part. When that becomes clear, then I can re-engage my conscious and develop the story. Before that is all subconscious development.
May 10, 2012 — 10:58 PM
Nathan Casey says:
Sometimes the best ideas or epiphanies come to me while driving. You know, that route you take to work everyday or whatever. You get there and you can’t remember the trip.
Also, I read somewhere that doing things that don’t take concentration – like brushing your teeth – with your non-dominant hand opens up new neural pathways. I suppose as it seems a bit out of whack.
But be careful, I was cutting cheese (not a euphemism for having a wank) with my left hand and chopped the end off my finger… I lie, it wasn’t as dramatic as that, but there was blood.
The upside was that no one else wanted any more cheese, so it was all mine (rubs hands together like a fly or maybe Ebenezer Scrooge would).
May 11, 2012 — 2:39 AM
Lynna Landstreet says:
I can totally relate to Stan R. Mitchell’s comment about habitually having weird thoughts in normal situations. I have that too. I think my personal favourite was when I was walking down the street and noticed a dental office with a wooden barrier around the front (presumably concealing some kind of construction or renovation work on the steps or sidewalk), and my brain immediately jumped to “Quickly, the besieged dentists erected wooden hoardings to keep out the invading army….” On getting closer, I realized the hoardings were only about 4 feet tall, so I mentally amended it to “…the invading midget army…”
And this quote in the main post amused me: “A moderate alcoholic high loosens a person’s focus of attention, making it easier to find connections among remotely related ideas…” Because having ADD is good for that too — except that you can’t turn it off by sobering up.
May 12, 2012 — 11:41 PM
Mike says:
It helps to have grandkids to be creative with, and to NOT live in an area where everyone is so comfortably the same. I let the ideas sit around in my brain while I walk or do the dishes or watch tv or chat with friends In a pub, and eventually those ideas get bored with just sitting around so they work something out between them.
May 13, 2012 — 2:38 PM
Timothy John Whitcher says:
I tend to think of a general idea, which includes a fuzzy middle and a possible conclusion. My general idea most often just pops into my head before sleep. I actually force myself to think of something else, so the story idea is fresh in my mind when I sit down to write it. I’ve found if I “write” the story in my mind, I lose interest. It’s as if I’ve already written the thing. Kind of like watching a movie, then watching it over immediately after.
But then, that may be why my writing sucks.
May 13, 2012 — 8:42 PM
Mieke Zamora-Mackay says:
I free-write in longhand for about 10-minutes a day. It lets me put down on paper the stuff that’s been in my head. It doesn’t make sense all the time, but once in a while a seed falls out. Which makes me think some more, and then free-write again.
May 14, 2012 — 10:43 AM
Jay Lake says:
I addressed this in a blog post a few years ago, talking about “the cloakroom of ideas”. Basically I find a shiny thread, then put it in the back of everything to hang like meat until it gets good and gamey.
http://jaylake.livejournal.com/442011.html
May 14, 2012 — 2:01 PM
Wulfie says:
What? No one mentioned the toilet inspired story ideas?
Ideas hit me whenever they want to. I’m apparently a walking target for muses. A line of conversation overheard, a bit of dialog or a song lyric, reading, tv,…Last night on the drive back from the store an old song came on the radio and BLAM I was instantly in a story with the main character and looking out her eyes. I wasn’t driving so I scrambled for a pen then scribbled part of the lyric, made a guess at the singer’s name, and a note to myself about the story and mood. (All this on a pack of butts which was the only thing remotely resembling something I could write on.)
May 19, 2012 — 6:53 PM
steve ward says:
pretty much everything you said i do, i slow cook my idea over months, i go for a walk while being chased by zombies. Have not tried the alcho one
May 22, 2012 — 10:18 PM
Bangarang says:
Music, walking with my music playing. Gets me every time.
Each of my interconnected sagas and their characters can be traced back to specific songs I listened to at the time of their unholy conception.
May 24, 2012 — 8:24 AM
Metalena says:
I write some keywords and ideas down and go do something else. When my subconscience is ready to make it a story, I’ll notice and think more actively about it. How do I notice? I don’t listen to people anymore because the film in my head is a lot more interesting than their gibberish.
May 30, 2012 — 7:59 AM