The Eternal Question Asked of Writers - "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?"

Sooner or later, every writer gets asked this question: "Where the heck do you get your ideas?" The flip answer is, "When I find out, I'll let you know!" Of course, that's no help. So, how do we get our ideas? Naturally, that's a tough question to answer. I can only give you an answer in terms of how I work.

First, I tend to look at things in a different and unexpected way - a way that's not practical for the workaday world, but perfect for the fiction world.

Let me give one example: In the 1990s, they were in the process of tearing down the Lake Street Bridge over the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities area. The bridge was nearly 100 years old and no longer safe.

One day, I stood with a bunch of onlookers, and we watched the whole deconstruction process unfold. Everyone around me was talking technicalities - how many men were needed to do the job, what safety measures were in place, how long it would take, etc.

What was I thinking? I was thinking, "I wonder where all the trolls will go now? Trolls live under bridges, so they'll have to find a new place." And that led me to write the fantasy/horror short story "Appetizers" in which the trolls find their new home...and a whole lot of new victims!

So, I'd looked at a very pedestrian process in a fantastic way. I do that quite often, especially with horror or fantasy pieces. In another story, Queen Elizabeth in the Open Bay, I had the famous queen thrust into the future...and into a service station with some very surprised auto technicians. Believe me, it's a fun way to think and write!

Second, I make connections in unexpected ways in terms of coming up with stories for books. For example, my first novel, The Relentless Pursuit of Everett Pick (now titled American Job) arose from my reading of the daily newspaper, also in the 1990s.

As incomprehensible as it seems now, during that time there was a whole series of articles and debates on how "dead white males" were to blame for all the ills in American society - racism, sexism, poverty, wars and on and on.

"Well," I thought, "white males are definitely responsible for a lot of bad things, but they're also responsible for a lot of good things as well. This has the feel of an irrational mob."

So, I wondered what would happen if a "live white male," Everett Pick, had every member of this mob chasing after him across America for imagined crimes. The result was a satirical action/adventure novel in which extremism (from all sides of the political spectrum) results in a comic tragedy.

By simply reading the paper on a daily basis and asking every writer's favorite question ("What if..."), I made a connection that led to a novel-length extrapolation of an idea.

So, if you aspire to be a writer, you can try my two techniques - view the world in a fantastic fashion and make unexpected connections. Or, you can forge your way!

Actually, coming up with ideas is easy. Forging them into fiction is the hard part. The old, but very true joke in writing is that if you want to be a writer, then sit down behind a desk and get up twenty years later."

Still want to be a writer? :)

Next time, I'll talk about...oh heck, I haven't got a clue. So, naturally, we'll talk about writer's block! In the meantime, if you want to see the creative process of fantastic thinking and connection-making in the science fiction genre, try one of my books below!

The First Misadventure of Fragger Sparks, A Ranger Finds the Way
The Second Misadventure of Fragger Sparks, A Ranger Loses His Way
The Third Misadventure of Fragger Sparks, A Ranger Paves the Way - now out in ebook and print!

The Gifts Great Writers Give Me - and You!

Last week, I said I'd mention the three writers who influenced me most and provided all of us with their literary gifts. They're easy for me to identify - Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Ernest Hemingway. Of course, I've read (and continue to read) many, many other writers, but this trio made me really want to be a writer!

I love Mark Twain because of his humor, clarity, and deceptively simple language. Plus, the man could flat out tell a story!

I love Charles Dickens for his outrageous ability to create memorable characters - Uriah Heep, Fagin, the Artful Dodger, Mr. Micawber and on and on. Not only do these characters stand out because of their actions, but their names almost always indicate what kind of person they are. Was there ever an author who was better at naming his characters than Dickens!? Not in my opinion.

I love Ernest Hemingway because of his oft-noted ability to write plain, direct sentences that somehow seem to be the deceptively simple surface of an ocean with deep currents of emotion beneath. Yes, he's a particularly masculine writer (as some of his critics have charged), but what's wrong with that? Those critics would give their right arm to write one sentence as well as he did!

So, there you have my main influences. Oh, I forgot to add the one I mentioned in an earlier blog - Alfred Bester. Now, this man is in nowhere the same category as Twain, Dickens or Hemingway as a writer, but for sheer, outrageous science fiction imagination, he still inspires me to this day!

Next week, I'll try to answer the question that every writer gets over and over again: "Where do you get your ideas?"

Family Ghosts and the Gifts They Give You

Last week, I mentioned I'd talk about ghosts, family ones. Family ghosts are different from the ones you see in the movies and on television. The difference is that they're real unlike the ones chased by the frauds on "Ghost Hunters" or other similar programs. I know because of personal experience. I lived with a ghost for over 50 years and didn't even know it. That ghost was my eldest brother, Jim. He was killed in WWII in Europe. I was about one year old at the time. Now, he did come back to haunt me, but not in any "conventional" sense (no apparitions, etc.). What happened, of course, was that my mother fell into a deep depression at the loss of her first-born and vowed to keep his memory alive, an entirely understandable desire. And that's when the ghost entered my life. My mother invoked Jim's name at every opportunity for the rest of her life. She was never proud of me, but Jim was. Jim would be so proud of what you've done. If only Jim were here...I didn't realize at the time that I was competing not only with a ghost, but a saintly one at that. I felt this vague and uneasy certainty that I was not measuring up and never would. That's the bad news about having a real ghost in your family. The good news is that it drove me inward to the place where a writer lives, his heart and his mind and his gut. And my brother's spirit drove me to achieve. So real ghosts, family ghosts, make your life miserable until their presence is uncovered and then they make you realize that you've gained strength and character because of their constant interference with your life. Writers are like other artists (poets, painters, etc.); they wouldn't have any material if it weren't for the suffering in their lives. So, here's to my brother, Jim, for his ultimate sacrifce for the nation and for the immense and inadvertent pain that was his personal gift to me - the gift that creates fiction. I wouldn't want to go through it again, but it was the best kind of haunting....Next week, away from the personal and back to writing. I'll talk about my three main influences and the specific gift each writer gave me - and the world!

Last week, I said I'd tell you why it took me 40 years to become a fiction writer, despite being inspired by the great science fiction writers of the 50s and 60s. Well, here goes....I wanted very much to write novels, short stories - anything! - but I couldn't do it! Around 1985, a very good psychologist said, "You suffer from chronic depression! Let's do something about it!" So, he prescribed the standard medication of that time, lithium, and, after a month, the depression did lift. I'd never realized that leaves were as green as they could be and the colors of flowers could be so intense. There was only one problem - I still couldn't write! Lithium cuts off the extremes of emotion to make you emotionally level, and that's not a good thing for a writer (this one, anyway). I couldn't tap into love or rage or any emotion in between. Then, about 10 years later, the best thing happened - I got sick! Standing over a pan of hot oatmeal one January day, I was suddenly hit by vertigo. I simultaneously felt as if I were ten feet tall at one moment and was going to put my face in the oatmeal the next. At the same time, the noise of a freight train and a screaming jet engine had entered my right ear. "Okay," I said, "this is not good!" So, off to the doctors I went, and they eventually diagnosed a non-cancerous "Acoustic neuroma." In other words, I had a mass in my head pressing on the auditory nerve. A few months later the surgeons cracked open my head and found out it wasn't a mass - it was a cyst. So, they filled it up with fat from another part of my head and sewed me back up. I lost a little hearing and that was that. So, what does this have to do with writing? Well, I was extremely depressed after the surgery (no income, etc.), so the psychologist prescribed Prozac. Two weeks after taking it, I was standing in the kitchen again when the antidepressant kicked in with a vengeance! It was actually like a cartoon where the light bulb of an idea goes on over the character's head! "Wow," I thought, "I can write and I can draw. All I have to do is work at it!" And I did. Four novels, several short stories, and four non-fiction books later, I'm a testament to the miracles of modern science. Oh, it wasn't easy adjusting to the antidepressants! I went through three or four of them before finding one that had few side effects. But it was worth it! And it shows how lucky I was and what a crooked path you sometimes have to take to get where you need to go....Next week, let's talk about ghosts...family ones!

Influences, Influences, Influences

Growing up in the Fifties, I read all the great science fiction writers of the period - Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Simak, etc. But none of them really fired my desire to become a writer until I got my hands on my first Alfred Bester story. It was, of course, "Fondly Fahrenheit." It's the tale of a rich playboy, James Vandaleur, and his murderous android and the fact that they end up as one very insane personalitiy. The use of shifting viewpoints was unique to me at the time, but what really fired my imagination was Bester's use of language. At that time, it had a kind of "hip" quality unlike anything in science fiction - staccato, rhyming, and with a kind of macabre flippancy that underscored the horrible madness of the situation. Compared to Bester's prose, the writing of other science fiction writers was a dull vanilla against the multi-colored explosions of his words and sentences. The introduction took me on to his novel, The Stars My Destination, the story of Gully Foyle and an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. In that book, I discovered that Bester could be the best writer in the world and the worst (often on the same page), but, oh, the imagination of the man! It soared and surged throughout the novel, and it was like a very contagious virus of creativity that infected my system. I wanted very badly to write like Alfed Bester, but, you know what, it took me more than 40 years to end up writing like myself! What took me so long? That's a tale for the next blog!