Maybe the most common question of all – “Where do you get your ideas?” is also the most annoying question – if only because it is impossible to answer.
One of the best cake makers (whose name eludes me) makes edibles acclaimed as works of art. I have always liked her theory – combine two colors that fight with each other and make them work. Perhaps it is because they are so odd you can never take your eyes off them.
I like to start at the heart of a mystery or ask – what would happen if – and the jackpot I place characters into depends on how courageous I feel that day. If I really want to take a chance I will do something that truly interests me – like – what would happen if a woman slept with her son-in-law? Then layer it – but truly loved her daughter. Then see if I can make it work. Amy Bloom did his in a story from “Even a Blind Man Can see How Much I Love You”.
The more horrible the better.
Key West’s own Michael Haskins, author of the Mad Murphy Mysteries and part of the Casa Marina Writer’s Group had this to offer when I asked,
“My ideas come from inside a bottle of Jameson’s, but I have to empty it before I can find them! Well, maybe not the whole truth. I read the local rag, Miami Herald, Boston Globe, LA Times and look for the small unusual piece that usually doesn’t get but a few paragraphs and is about something criminal. If I like the concept I think of how to bring that incident to KW or how it would happen here; what has to be changed, etc. When I’ve figured that out, maybe I have a story.”
I end this post wth an excerpt from George Orwell’s famous essay entitled “Why I Write”
(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
More on this later . . .