Literally, Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

A post by P.T. Phronk,
of Forest City Pulp fame

“Where do you get your ideas?”

That’s the infamous question writers get asked all the time, and many of them hate it. I think the hate is for two reasons: 1) I dunno man, I just make them up. The question forces writers to confront the fact that they don’t know themselves any better than they know a stranger asking the question; and 2) It implies that getting ideas is the hard part. Maybe a better question is: “how do work really hard to create a bundle of pages containing tens of thousands of words, wrapped in a professional cover with beautiful art and a snappy blurb, which people want to buy, that originated with a stupid thought that popped in your head while washing your junk in the shower?”

 

Which leads to another interesting question: literally where do you get your ideas? Like, what physical location?

 

This came up in a group for horror writers on Facebook recently, and answers included:

 

• Lying in bed attempting to sleep.
• At a boring day job.
• On the couch watching a bad TV show.
• While commuting, on foot, on a bicycle, or in a vehicle.
• And yes, the shower.

 

There’s a common theme there: ideas flow when the writer’s mind isn’t blocked up with something else.

 

Perhaps that can help explain the first reason writers hate the non-literal version of that question. They can’t answer the question because the ideas only present themselves in certain physical locations where the mind can wander. Because of the “present themselves” part, this is where many discussions of this topic mention supernatural muses, or more realistically, the subconscious. Places that allow the subconscious to come out and play are fertile ground for ideas.

 

I think it’s more than that.

There is a component of ideas that does lie outside of consciousness, which is why the hated question can’t be answered accurately. However, there is also a component that requires consciousness. Lying in bed, routine tasks, showering—they don’t require conscious thought, so consciousness is free to interact with the subconscious. It’s not just letting the subconscious out to play, but having the capacity to play with it.

 

The subconscious isn’t a supernatural muse. It’s a child that craves attention, but only gets it from her workaholic parents when they can all take a little vacation together.

 

Knowing the physical location of ideas doesn’t help with the second reason writers hate that question, though—that it’s very hard work to turn ideas into something tangible—especially because almost all those situations make it hard to even jot down an approximation of the idea. I have a waterproof notebook in the shower, but I stopped getting ideas in that location as soon as I put the notebook there. The last “idea” I wrote down was this:

 

Letting the ideas flow.

 

Sometimes, that child only wants attention until she can actually get some, at which point she becomes … unruly.

 “Where do you get your ideas?” On the particularly dull stretch of sidewalk between Central and Queens on my way to work. In bed, while in the liminal state between waking and sleep. On the couch, watching FBoy Island, or doing nothing at all. I’m a writer; that counts as working.
 
—
 
P.S. I was scheduled to do an interview today, but I … did not. Apologies to the 5 people that know this blog has a schedule. I’ll try to be less antisocial next time

It's Hard to Make Art in a Messed-Up World

A post by P.T. Phronk,
of Forest City Pulp fame

I have a confession: I haven’t finished writing anything in months. During those same months, a pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe, and marches to protect the lives of Black people have been met with inaction and/or police violence. It’s a bit of a mess out there.

But wait, wait, isn’t turmoil supposed to breed great art? So we should be in the middle of a perfect storm for creativity, right? There is so much to say, and we can say it with insightful art fuelled by the anxiety and dread that keeps every tortured artist going.

I remember when Bush Jr. became president of the U.S. in 2001, musicians explicitly said stuff like “at least there’s an upside, because great music is born out of rebellion.”

Yet I’ve gotten nothing done in the last few months. WTF.

I’m a brain scientist in my day job, so I usually seek answers in science first. A quick review of the literature shows that, actually, happy people tend to be the most creative. Depression, stress, and anxiety either have no effect, or actively harm creativity.

The tortured artist: fake news

More anecdotally, in hindsight we can see that Bush’s reign led to a lot of war and turmoil, but did musicians create their best work? Some of the top songs during the later part of his term:

• Thnks fr th Mmrs
• Buy U a Drank
• SexyBack
• This is Why I’m Hot
• Crank That (Soulja Boy)

All perfectly fine songs, but not exactly a Renaissance for rebellion music that will be remembered for centuries (for centuriiies (sorry, I actually really like Fall Out Boy)).

Even individual artists don’t create their best work when grieving for unique personal reasons, according to this study.

As anyone who has completed a creative pursuit knows, it takes a lot of hard work. Anything that distracts from that work isn't really helping—it's not like complicated, tumultuous emotions can just pop out of your head and take form as a profound work of art. Turmoil may inform art, or inspire art, but you still have to put fingers to keyboard, pick to guitar, brush to canvas, whatever, and it's difficult to do that when you're curled in a ball with tears in your eyes and a pain in your gut from stress-eating another tub of ice cream to briefly distract yourself from the day's latest round of Twitter-fueled fuckery.

Which is to say … we need to keep fighting. Worrying that your mom will die of a horrible respiratory disease won’t create the next Mona Lisa. Continued systemic racism won’t be responsible for the next Prince (after all, George Floyd was a musician). Let’s eradicate this virus and eradicate white supremacy, because there is no artistic upside to this shit.

My Creative Battery

I hadn’t figured out until recently that I function on several different batteries. Maybe all of you already knew this and I’m just slow, but I thought I’d share anyway in case there is someone else out there who hasn’t yet figured out all their batteries. Here’s how I finally grouped mine:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Adulting
• Creativity

My Physical Battery gives me the ability to stay awake during the day and move my body through all its physical needs. My Emotional Battery controls how well I tolerate frustrations throughout the day. My Adulting Battery keeps me charged for all the responsibilities I have to accomplish in any given day: get the kid to school/activities, walk the dog, make dinner, do the laundry, etc. My Creative Battery is what I use for writing and all other activities that require creativity.

Of course, this would be the optimal state:

The thing I’ve discovered recently is that these batteries drain and recharge at different rates. In addition, if I need more in one of the ‘key’ areas—such as my Physical Battery—I have to drain some of the others. Lately, my battery capacity has looked a lot like this:

Certainly, there is fluctuation in this model from day to day, but I’d say this has been a good average for me over the last year. I knew my creativity was suffering—not that I wasn’t feeling creative anymore, just that it took an extreme amount of effort to pull it out of my head. Writing was slow and forced. I’d sit for hours trying to figure out what to do for my scheduled blog post. All the things I need to do to run my author business—marketing, social media, events, newsletter, etc.—also come from this tank.  A few months ago I ran a fitness challenge for my gym and it tapped out all of my remaining creative juice. All of my writing related responsibilities took a huge hit because I had nothing else left in the tank.

So what to do? How could I recharge it?

I tried to pull from some of my other batteries, but that didn’t work. All it did was add ‘lazy and cranky’ to my ‘uncreative’ characterization.

I tried to be creative in other areas, hoping that once I started it would generate new creative juice. I’d spend time with my daughter in the craft room. I’d read a lot, as that often inspires my creativity. The result—just more drainage of what little creative juice I did have left in the tank.

It took my daughter’s summer break to make me realize what I needed—SLEEP! Over the past year, I averaged between 5 and 5.5 hours of sleep 6 out of 7 nights. It was apparently enough to keep my Physical Battery at a functional level, but that was it. But even that battery was in danger. There were a few nights where I was so tired it felt like my bones hurt. Days when I’d be falling asleep in a doctor’s waiting room. Mornings when I felt I needed to pull over to the side of the road because I wasn’t sure I could keep my eyes open for the 15-minute drive to the gym. I was pulling so much from my other batteries just to keep moving. I didn’t want my family to give me the boot, so I had to watch the levels in my Emotional and Adulting Batteries. That meant the Creative Battery got the biggest ax.

Now that my daughter is on summer break, I can sleep in a bit and go to a later workout time. That one hour a day has helped me so much! I can feel my creative juice coming back up. The downside is I only have 2 weeks left to figure out what to do once school starts again. My goal is to find a way to get to this model:

Basically, I need to find a way to be plugged in all the time. I have to keep going to my workouts in support of my health goals, and early morning is my best option so sleeping in will be out once school starts back up. I might be able to mix in some later workouts, but that causes a different kind of drain on my writing so it wouldn’t be a permanent solution. I can’t drink caffeine for medical reasons, so that’s not an option. I’d been resorting to food as my energy source, but that wasn’t working well and it detracted from my health goals. I already take Vitamin D, but I may have to look into additional vitamins. I’ve tried diffusing oils at times, and occasionally that helps. I figure I’m going to have to get to bed earlier, but I’m not optimistic it will be sustainable long term. I’m not one to take naps, but I might have to try to figure out how to do that if I can’t get to bed. The struggle is real, and I suppose I ought to figure it out now while my Creative Battery is still sufficiently charged! Jonathan’s recent post about meditation gave me some ideas that I might try. 

What about you? Do you find your batteries are grouped in similar ways? What do you do to keep them charged?

~ Carrie