Chapter 9: How Do You Come Up With Ideas?
“You make connections. If you’re writing sci fi, you pick some technology, or some social trend, and you ask yourself where it could go from there. Or you make something up and figure out how it could work. For fantasy, you sometimes just have to set the stage, like you’re running a Dungeons and Dragons game, and just let the characters do their thing.”
“What if you don’t know what story you want to tell?”
She took a deep breath. Tapped her fingers on the table. “Maybe you just start writing about a character. Don’t have them do anything. Just live with them for a while, let them do their own things.”
“Like, just sit there?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they fidget. Maybe they worry about their own insecurities. I don’t know. What do you do when you’re bored?”
He shrugged. “Find something new to do.”
“What have you done in your life, Steve?”
He leaned back. She could just imagine how he would put his fingers into the straps of his suspenders, if he had any. “Well,” he said, and she could almost see the pipe he’d be puffing on. “When I graduated high school, I went on a road trip and drove across the country for a year. Along the way, I learned to rock climb, to fix cars, play guitar, canoe, white water raft, scuba dive, spelunk, skydive, and cut hair. Then I spent some time as a ranger at a park in Kansas. When that got boring, I learned to play chess and traveled around the chess circuit for a while. I learned how to box. I worked as a bouncer for a week. I cleaned dishes.” He took a deep breath, blew it out his nose. “I wrote a few songs. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I didn’t do anything for all that long. Except college. I got a degree in Business, of course, with minors in psychology, history, music, and chemistry.”
She couldn’t even hide how impressed she was. “So why writing?”
He shrugged again. “I haven’t done that yet.”
That made her laugh. “Is that all?”
He looked uncomfortable. He leaned forward and put his hands on the table. It made the air feel closer, almost like they were about to share a secret. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “So I’m trying to find something, anything, that lights my fire.”
“None of that stuff—“
He shook his head. “Not for any length of time. I spent a week skydiving when I was nineteen. Did thirty-six jumps in that week. Then, all of a sudden, it just stopped being fun. I was on my way to being a jumpmaster. Could have taught other people to jump. But, it just kinda–I don’t know—died for me. You know?”
She couldn’t even conceive how jumping out of a perfectly good airplane could ever lose its appeal. For that matter, she wasn’t entirely sure how jumping out of a perfectly good airplane could really gain any appeal, either. “So you think that writing is a good last option?”
He leaned back again. “I don’t know. I just heard someone say you write what you know. And I figured, I’ve had a lot of experiences. There must be a story I can tell in there somewhere.”
She nodded. “You’d think.”
“So what do we do to get an idea? A walk? A drive? Exercise?”
She groaned softly. “Steve, I can’t literally walk you through all of this.” She took another gulp, finishing the coffee. Was she in over her head? “I can help you develop an idea, but I can’t tell you where to go to get one. Believe me, if there was a secret place somewhere that writers went to get ideas, we’d all be Tom Clancy and Steven King. You just have to let it come to you.”
“How long will I have to wait?”
“Sometimes a few seconds. Sometimes a lot longer.”
“And you can’t help me?”
She rubbed her head again, starting to enjoy the feel of the short hair against the skin of her palm. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the thing. You haven’t written anything before. That means you’ve got plenty to say. You’ve led an interesting life so far. So there must be a story in there somewhere, right?”
“You want me to write about my life?”
“No. Yes.” She let out a sigh. “Let’s try this. Tomorrow, we’re going to meet in the park again. This time, at the swing set. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“When you come, you need to bring me a sample of your writing.”
“What do I write about?”
“Pick anything you’ve done. One instance. Something that, while fun, wasn’t significant. So not your first jump and not your thirty-sixth. But maybe your seventeenth, or whatever. I don’t know. Just one of the jumps where something happened, where something was different. Tell me a story. That’s all. I just want a quick story about something you’ve done. Only write it down. Okay?”
There was a gleam in his eyes as he paid the check.
He paid the check. Maybe she should start having these meetings over meals. It never hurt to have someone else buy her lunch.