Even More Idea Sources
Last week in "More Idea Sources," I posted the comments of five writers who told us how they get their ideas. Clear to me was how similar their path followed the ways of Socrates, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Goethe, Mozart, Poe, Amy Lowell, Dostoyevsky, and Walter Lantz that I published last November.
This seems to suggest that there are proven ways to get ideas. Before we jump to conclusions, let's look at the idea-ways of a few more folks who responded to my Right Brain Workout, "The Source of Ideas."
 | Linda Barnett-Johnson:, My ideas usually come from watching the news or reading the newspaper. I'm very passionate about people and animals. After hearing about female circumcision, I had to write a story about it. When hearing about how the Taliban treat their women, I wrote a story. I wrote a story called, The Silent Scream, about abortion. Anything that makes me cry or hurt, I have to find paper and pen. |  | Kendra Crispin: My imagination does a lot of that work for me. I'll wonder why one thing is the way it is, and an idea or question springs from there. Sometimes it takes a little more thought since some possibilities are just unrealistic, depending on what you're dealing with. I'll find these through reading stories, the news, or just random thinking. |  | Morf Morford: I like slamming unlikely things together—perhaps food and music, or a stray bumper sticker and a remnant from a dream. The more improbable the source, the more "spark" in the impact. It also works to veer from looking at the big picture and the micro-incident. Perhaps it is the jarring from the familiar point of view that generates creativity. |  | Jason Hough: I have recently become interested in random inspirations. For example, I will go to a site like flickr.com and search their millions of photographs based on whatever words come to my mind, sort of a word association technique I guess. I put in a random word, or two, and then look at the resulting pictures to find something I can use. |  | Emma Lee: The simple answer is "everywhere" but that never satisfies. Sometimes a memory (often from childhood because that's you're experiencing things for the first time) surfaces, sometimes a news story catches my idea and sometimes I'll read something by someone else and think (arrogantly perhaps) "I can do better," so, having thought that, I have to prove it and sometimes it's as simple as taking an idea for a walk. |
Once again, the respondents are all writers. And once again, at least one of them quoted the famous. Morf Morford added a quote from George Balanchine: "God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it—from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do."
Now I'd like to hear how you get your ideas. Where do you get your best ideas? What techniques do you use?
Email replies here. I'll post them in a future Right Brain Workout.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.
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