WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?

By Mary Kennedy                                               
                                                                                                             

This is probably the most frequent question writers face--at conferences, in classes or during interviews. And of course, there is no right answer. Most of us don't really know where we get our ideas. And some of us, I'm ashamed to say, give flippant replies. One of my friends always says breezily, "Oh, you know, I buy them at the idea store." She follows this with a big smile, but I bet people find her answer irritating.

Another friend (who shall be nameless, I don't want to embarrass her) says, "Oh that's easy. I steal them. It sure beats trying to think them up myself!" And then she gives a merry laugh. Not condoning her silly response. I think she's just fed up with answering the same question so many times.     

The fact is, ideas are elusive, mercurial. If you look at them too closely, they fade like frost on a window pane. Some ideas are "book worthy," some are just passing fancies.  Kind of like people you meet at a cocktail party. They drift across the edges of our consciousness, never to return. 

Ideas can come from so many places, including snippets of conversation. I was riding a cross town bus in Manhattan when I overheard a conversation between two women sitting behind me. One woman said, "So how are Howard and Sylvia doing? I haven't heard from them in awhile." Her friend replied, "Not so good. You know, things have never been the same since he threw her through that plate glass window."

 It was hard not to gasp. They both got off at the next stop so I never heard the rest of Howard and Sylvia's story. That idea stayed with me for a long time, though. What kind of woman would stay with a man who threw her through a plate glass window? Would any of my characters ever do that? If Howard was murdered, would Sylvia be the prime suspect? Would Sylvia play the forgiveness card and then secretly plan his demise?

A snippet of a song can lead to a book idea. I was watching The Big Chill (an old movie but a favorite) and heard the famous lyrics from the Rolling Stones:

And, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime you might find
You get what you need.
Definitely some good book material there! And food for thought. 
Someone once said that writers are like sponges, absorbing sights, sounds, impressions and ideas all day long; a never-ending stream flowing across our brains. Some are good, some are okay, some are terrific. The smell of freshly cut grass, hearing the words from a long-forgotten song, the sound of a screen door banging shut on a hot summer night, the patterns the sunlight makes as it filters through the trees, this is all grist for the mill. We'll tuck it away and it will all turn up in a book sometime. Nothing is wasted.
 Writers are always thinking, recording, taking mental notes about our surroundings. We can't help it. We do it automatically. I think it's in our DNA.
One of my friends said to me, "Are you always thinking about books? Always coming up with ideas for plots and characters and settings?"
Busted! "Yes, I am. Why?"
"Well, it's sort of annoying," she told me. 
"Sorry," I said. "It goes with the territory."
But was I really sorry? Probably not. Where would I be without ideas? No ideas, no books! No books, no readers. So I guess I'll keep on thinking and welcoming those elusive ideas...
Happy reading, Mary Kennedy