Thinking lately about where one gets ideas. I mean, that seems to be one of the most frequently asked questions of writers (not that anyone's ever asked me). Where do you get your ideas? people ask, either out of sheer curiosity, or as many writers suspect, because the questioner wants to get ideas too.
I think it's the wrong question to ask; it's not a matter of where, but how. For me it's a matter of at least two separate things coming together to make something new, like gametes. (Gametes forming an embryo that eventually grows into the 2-foot monster baby snorgling against your chest. But I digress.) Relationships and 1001 Nights. Vampires and The Waste Land. Autism and superheroes. I find it hard to take just one thing and run with it. A friend once told her husband to write her a Japanese ghost story. I couldn't do that. I'd need to be told, "Japanese ghosts and monster trucks. Write it."
I'm musing on this as submission guidelines for a new anthology, Bibliotheca Fantastica, co-edited by Claude (yes, I'm flaunting our first-name basis), have been posted. The theme, in short, is books and book culture. I'd like to submit something, but I only have one gamete and the second is stubbornly reluctant in forthcoming.
The other instigator for this blog post is an earlier message from J., who's covering Startup Weekend. Just as everyone has pitched their ideas, he thinks of his own brilliant idea...but it's too late to participate. Again, how does one get ideas? Keep working, keep that gerbil in your head running in its wheel, because ideas always pop up when you're at your busiest. I don't need to be working on a third story at the moment. But the gerbil runs, runs, runs, can't stop running.
