In this piece, the author shares her perspective as a writer on idea generation, and organizing the mad flurry of thoughts that ensues into a story. As a novelist, I go through ideas like a smoker expends cigarettes. Some are used down to the butts, tossed at the curb to be long forgotten, while others are carefully rubbed out and stored for safe keeping, to reappear in a moment of need. Then there is the vast majority, that are lit and sucked clean one after the other, until I look down and my box is finally empty. When generating new ideas, I tend to be an abstract thinker. I follow no specific pattern, choosing to create when inspiration strikes, which is surprisingly often. I do only three things the same with any piece I write, and they are plot lists, family trees, and G2s (my preferred choice of pen). Plot lists are extremely useful in the generation stage. In almost every case, my stories are born as scribbled notes that came to me out of nowhere, while traveling, sleeping, whatever the case may be. From there, I organize them in a list that usually resembles something like this: It is in this stage that details, things like exact dialogue, plot points, minor conflicts, and character voices become more palpable to me. Family trees are incredibly important, because I am a character driven writer. My number one priority lies not with the reader or even the story. My loyalties lie with the characters above anything else. That said, I know everything there is to know about any given person, even the minor players and people that may not be named, or used in the story. For example, in a current work of mine, I created a young man named Anthony. From the first moment that I knew him, I already distinguished that he was tall (6’ 10’’) because he is a basketball player. I also knew immediately that he was very shy, and that he had an intense love for literature. (I first saw him quoting Robert Herrick.) He has a very low self-esteem, has little experience with girls as a result, and has an uncanny talent with a basketball on the court, especially as a power-forward. We see Anthony often because he is a main character, so it makes sense for me to have this information, as well as the three unending pages of backstory I have on him. However, though it is a very real possibility that we will never meet them, ever, I also have worked out, in detail, who his family is. Michael McLaren Graham (52)(Doctor, golfer, tall, charismatic) + June-Marie Graham (53)(Teacher, college basketball player, talkative) =Robert Michael(26) =Anthony McLaren(22) =Lyle Monroe(18) =Joshua James(17) =Ethan Anais(16) =Adam Patrick(12) I won’t bore you with the exact details of his five brothers, and the history of his parents and otherwise, but you get the idea. These ideas, and any others that drift to me, usually come when I least expect them. I make it a point to never grab at inspiration. (As Raymond Chandler put it, “pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.) Where they come from, specifically, beats me. My own experience and desires rule my writing, in that I write about either what I know or what I wish to know. The excerpts and notes above come from a story I began when I first fell in love with college basketball, which is central to the story’s plot since we mostly revolve around characters improving their game. I also developed something of a crush on a specific player in reality, which lent an easy in for some romantic interest. Interestingly, I’ve found that drugs make a tremendous difference when spawning ideas. I had always read about people’s psychedelic quests for creativity, and been curious about what that meant. And then I had the bizarre opportunity to find out, in the form of opiates, thanks to two rather painful surgeries. It was as though I was no longer in body, I had access to my mind through some other doorway, in some other time. Sure, I couldn’t speak without slurring and I was walking head long into furniture, but the notes I wrote under the influence led to my most brilliant and profound work yet. It actually shocked me a little; I began to wonder, while toward the end of recovery, if I could create like that without the high. I was doubtful. But when I began to feel not just mental reliance on those little white pills, but physical dependency as well, I decided to cut it off. It was a good decision. I haven’t tried them since, but continue to work on the novel that was brought forth from those notes. (And to be clear, I don't intend to try them again. I've found that a certain degree of exhaustion works nearly as well on a creative plane.)
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