The Well Of Ideas

Today’s post comes to us from Debbie Fuller Thomas, a kindred spirit and gifted writer. She regularly contributes to our sister blog, Novel Matters.

It’s one of the questions most asked of writers, and the most difficult to answer.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

Neil Gaiman answered it this way: “You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if…?”

Why is it so difficult?  For most, it’s too hard to know the point of conception.  It may begin as a transient bit of fractured light, an embryo of life, and you find yourself holding your breath for the briefest moment.  You turn it over in your mind with a light touch and it beads like mercury eluding capture.  You can’t say where it came from, but it could be a gift – one that morphs into story with characters that people love and hold forever in their hearts.

The moment you realize you have something meaningful and precious in your hands is exhilarating.  You dig in your pocket for a scrap of paper and a pen or even a crayon, and you write it down before the moment passes.  For some inexplicable reason, babies and story ideas prefer to come in the dead of night, and it behooves a writer to have a pad and pen on the nightstand.  The handwriting can be unintelligible in the morning, but the nugget of idea is there.

Ideas come from tangible sources, too.  My first book idea came from an article in People magazine about two toddlers who were switched at birth, and my second was from a book about infertility.  I saw the stories through the eyes of a mother, and having first-hand experience with infertility, the ‘what if’ questions came easily.

I think most of all, we love to study people.  Some wear their stories like invisibility cloaks, hiding in full view.  Imagine a lone, bedraggled parent picking at fries in a booth at McDonalds, disconnected from his unruly kids and oblivious to the people frowning at their behavior.  Why is he alone? Is he divorced or widowed or recently abandoned? Has his wife been deployed or have they come from the hospital where she’s resting quietly with baby number three, or perhaps she’s in a drug-induced coma following an accident?   What could he possibly be contemplating at a time like this?  (Of course, writers study happy people, too.)

Probably the most personal way to find ideas is to mine our own experiences.  The trick comes in not sacrificing the privacy of loved ones for the sake of story.  The same goes for friends and acquaintances.  I have two stories that I ache to write, full of poignant tragedy and hope, but it would be a betrayal of very good friends, and I can’t risk it.  Maybe the time will come when it’s appropriate.  Maybe not.

There are as many ways to discover ideas as there are writers, and each one coaxes them into story from a unique perspective. I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the writer’s creative process.

Happy reading!

Debbie Fuller Thomas writes contemporary fiction from an historic Gold Rush town in Northern California.  When she’s not working on her next book or planning children’s programs for her community, she enjoys singing with Colla Voce of the Sierras with her husband and catching up with her two adult children.  Her debut novel, Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon was a finalist for the 2009 Christy Award and the 2009 ACFW Book of the Year.  Her next novel, Raising Rain, released September 1, 2009.