So what's the big idea?

If you go to writers’ festivals and sit through enough Q&A sessions, it’s likely you’ll hear this question posed to author panels at some time: Where do you get your ideas?

I’ve heard answers that ranged from the vague to the slightly sarcastic, “Ideas 101.”

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Where do ideas come from? Here are some places:

• First hand experience
• Visual images
• Tactile experiences
• Music
• Dreams
• Conversations overheard
• Stories in the news (TV and the movie industry tap this resource constantly)

If the above fails you, here are some are fallback techniques to open the mind and spark the creative flow:

• Retell an old story
• Write fan fiction (it worked for EL James)
• Use an idea generator like the Archetype Writing. This helpful site doesn’t just give story prompts, it also offers assistance on developing character depth, and breaking writer’s block.

Lynda Barry reminds us, “In the digital age, don’t forget to use your digits.” We can use our digits along with the rest of our senses not just to infuse a story, but to deliver one.

Seven years ago my senses ganged up on me when I walked into an old farmhouse. The former owner had been moved suddenly to a nursing home and her threadbare socks still hung above the Aga stove. The room smelled of washing powder and neglect. The curling family photographs, the dull afternoon light, and the chilly air stirred something deep inside me. That night I wrote the story Constant Cravings which you can read here.

So I’d like to know – where do you get your inspiration? Do your ideas find and possess you until you’ve captured them on the page? Are you often bombarded with so many ideas that the real challenge is in selecting just one? Or are you like Samuel Johnson, turning over half a library to make one book?

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Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Do you think it's sexy?

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In her blog Discover Your Inner Geisha Leslie Downer advises that the kimono should be worn low at the back, to reveal the nape of the neck. Because almost every other part of a woman’s body was concealed, the nape of the neck was held in high regard in the Japanese culture. In this portrait, Powdering the Neck, by Utamaro the poem in the upper left corner compares the graceful line of the courtesan’s neck, her hairpin and her white powdered face to snowy, moonlit landscape[1].  It’s an erotic work from a pre-eminent artist of the Ukiyo-e movement.

Years ago I scuba dived with a guy who always walked behind me as I clambered up the beach with my tonnage of gear. We dived together in spring and summer and I invariably wore clunky European sandals because they were like 4WD at the end of my legs. On our last dive together my buddy confided he had a foot fetish and I had a particularly good pair. Shortly after that we went our separate ways but the foot fetish comment stayed with me for a long time. For one thing it made me realize how varied sexual preferences can be.

Then along came E L James and her admitted mid-life crisis which she turned into the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. It’s billed as erotic romance. I’ve also heard it called bad writing with lots of excellent pornography. Maybe this fetish-based literature is just the 21^st century equivalent of the nape of the neck, one of the last few taboos that remained, and has now been revealed to mainstream readers.

If your work involves characters over the age of thirteen, you probably need to know something about their sexuality. How do you know if your character has a nape-of-the- neck tastes or salivates at the sight of certain body piercings? Does he or she have a chest in their bedroom full of ropes and riding crops?

Print: Utamaro

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[1] Wendy Shore, Ukiyo-E, (Shorewood Fine Art Books 1980)