Where do you get your ideas from?
Like many creative people I get asked this question a lot . . . my stock answer is that I have a specially trained elf, Sebastian, who lives underneath my bed and feeds them to me whilst I sleep.
I have to confess that this facetious response is inspired by (I think) John Cleese who used to respond that he had them posted from an aunt who lived just outside Swindon.
But why? Why is this question such a cliché, and such a persistent one? What is it really asking?
Because, after all, logically, people know there is no rationale for the creative process - there is no answer to “Where do you get your ideas from?” It’s not even grammatically correct.
So - let’s speculate.
Is it a curiosity not about where ideas come from, but about how a person can harness those ideas and transform a fleeting electric charge into something it is possible to share with other humans?
My explanation to the children in my audiences is that stories are floating around us in the air, unseen and unheard all the time, and because I have a magical storytelling crown with very special story-detecting antennae, I am able to pull the stories:
“Out of the air and into my brain, out of my mouth and into your ears”
This seems to be perfectly logical and utterly believable for them . . . but then they’re children - they know where ideas come from, they haven’t forgotten yet.
Maybe the question is more, “What is your process?”
For myself . . . it is simultaneously hell and heaven.
I put aside one day a week - Wednesday, since you ask - when I visit the house of a very generous and trusting friend (who has a full time job) to be alone and write - far away from any displacement activities or familial interruptions. . . and I just write - anything.
I allow myself that what I write might be rubbish . . . but I WILL NOT allow myself to put nothing on the paper, whether typed or hand written, there must be a body of sentences by the end of the day.
It is mostly like pulling teeth, and I spend the whole day beating myself up about how rubbish I am and how I’m wasting my time and I hate everything I do, and it seems to physically hurt - especially the new thing.
And then I put it away.
I do not look at it until the next Wednesday (I go and earn a living), but I do spend time fretting about how bad I’m going to feel when I am next confronted by my weedy offerings.
And then Wednesday comes, and I look, and I laugh and I wonder what all that self-indulgent pining was for, and I finish it, I edit, and I start another and repeat the whole process. . . knowing that it's not until I put it in front of children that I can find out what exactly I've done, and how it should be performed.
SO - mostly, ideas come from a pain in the **** (mouth, that is) - it’s not enjoyable pulling them
“Out of the air and into my brain, out of my mouth and into your ears”
but when I’m telling tales to my audience, and I hear them laugh, and join in, and want to make up their own stories, I feel very privileged, and very, very happy . . . . and so does Sebastian.