How do you find your ideas? Authors are often asked this
question in interviews. Or perhaps; Do you have trouble finding ideas to write
about? My problem is the opposite. I have too many ideas. What I’ve
found is that having an idea and getting the idea down in words that actually
say what I imagine they should, is a totally different pot o’ honey. Does that metaphor
work? I also don’t have enough time to actually write a different story for
every idea that I have.
That said I’ve found that using more than one idea in a
story can add not only a new dimension to it, but adding two, three or sometimes
four different ideas can make the original idea much more profound, intricate,
and beguiling to the reader. Kind of
like a photographer taking a shot with one type of lens and then finding that
if a wider (or narrower) angle is used the whole view of the photo, the whole
concept and direction of the photograph is changed, broadened and the focus
encompasses more than the photographer originally dreamed of. Or a painter who
finds a new color that brings a startling new life to his painting, a life not
previously glimpsed, an ambiance not previously hoped for but now heartily
embraced and enhanced. Or what about a musician who finally plays a note in a sequence he's never used before and falls into a piece of music the world must hear?
Do you use more than one idea in a story, different lenses
on the same scene, more than one new color on your canvas? Do you mix and match,
push your mind outside of your “normal” range to see what creation you are
capable of producing? Because to me, finding the “newness” in ones “old” methods
is what makes creating so beautiful and satisfying, even if it doesn’t always
work the way we think it should.
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