Greenpastures313’s Weblog

Anyone who writes on a regular basis gets asked this question at least once by someone: “Where do you come up with your ideas?”  Looking back on nearly ten years as a weekly columnist for our local paper, and twice that many years plus writing church bulletins and occassional pieces for various religious papers and/or magazines, I can honestly see that, wherever the ideas came from, some of them would have better just stayed there. But, for good or ill, they erupted from my bent mind and I had to write. There was no choice. I perused an old column which I had written for a church bulletin in the 1980’s and cringed. I can’t believe I said that. Writing, like anything else, is a skill that’s honed sharper and sharper with use. I’ll probably look back 20 years from now, Lord willing, and wonder what in the world got into me with that. but as for where the ideas come from it’s simple. I think of one word, an action word usually, and type it and I keep typing a word until the right one appears. The right one is the one that calls out to all his friends and says, “hey come on over here, something’s happening.” If a word doesn’t talk, I backspace him on out of there and look for another. I’m no expert, but from reading what others write and what they write about writing and from my own tried and true experience, writing has to flow. It can’t be manipulated as easily as some may think. Whenever I set to write a foregone conclusion, often I end up at a place entirely unthought of by my limited mental vision, and that’s cool. That’s when I go “hey, what a cool place.”  Interesting. And when that one right word just stubbornly refuses to rear its head, then I walk around in circles chanting to the gods (King, Rice, McMurtry) clubbing myself over the head with a foam tomahawk I brought home from a Braves game. It’s a weird process, but sometimes weirdness is called for.