News

In the interest of that most oft asked question; how do you get those ideas? Here’s a little more on topic. I have an idea moving around in my head. I can feel it, it’s probably been in the back of my mind, my subconscious, for some time, but now it’s finally big enough or ready enough to poke at the front of my head. I’m getting glimpses of it, or I’m looking at ordinary things in extroidinary ways. I don’t know what this idea is yet, but I do know it has wings, or something in the story has wings because I am unduly fascinated with birds. I’m like a cat, my eyes distracted by almost any winged movement, or even the wind blowing something. There was a black plastic bag torn to ribbons in a tree in the grocery store lot. I was fascinated by it. With the first glance I thought it was some huge black bird, then at second glance, I knew what it was, but my imagination made it something else. For a moment, a blink of the mind, I saw it as something else. Something bigger and more dangerous, or more unreal. For an instant I had a picture of what is coming in this idea. My mind tries to give it a name, an image, because the human mind tries to make patterns. It’s what we do. But I don’t want to rush this idea into a shape that is not it’s true shape? I don’t want to try and squeeze the idea into a mold that is not the right fit. I’ve done that before, and the rewriting is a bitch. I’ve learned to back off, swallow my impatience, and let the idea come to me fully formed, knowing what it is. When I say fully formed, I don’t mean a complete story, or book, just that that winged shape will know what it is, and why I’ve been staring off into space, almost as if I’m trying to see things that are not only not there, but could never be there. My imagination is about to push something forward, almost there, almost there. I haven’t had an idea distract me this much in the real world in awhile. Something with wings, something about birds, or maybe not. I can almost see it. For those of you who think I’m teasing, I’m not. I’ve told you almost all I’ve seen, all the idea has told me. I have one more glimpse, more solid, but I think I’m wrong. I think it’s me trying to put a face on the idea. So I wait, wait for the idea to come to me. Some ideas you have to hunt down, chase them, club them and bring them back, but other ideas won’t come like that. They’ll shatter into a thousand pieces and die under such direct attack. This kind of idea you just have to wait it out, to sit still and wait for the idea to come to you. It will come, especially once you’ve seen it peeking at you, it will come closer, if you have patience. Some ideas you have to coax to your hand like luring birds down from the sky to take food from your palm.