Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Water as a Creative Conduit

When I made my annual trek to visit my psychic earlier in the month, one of the things she told me was that I get a lot of my ideas when I am in or near water. Apparently she is on to my waterlogged notebooks... Either way, she was right, as she is about most things, and this morning proved no different. As I'm washing my hair I had an epiphany. You see, on Friday when Maxx and I were brainstorming on Book 2, I kept running into a bit of a glitch on why or how I was going to make something happen that needed to. Then, as I'm adding the conditioner it hits me in a rush, as if the water pressure knocked something loose in my brain and the realization came flooding out.

So while Book 1 is toddling along at a bit of a slower pace at the moment, the ideas for Book 2 seem to be alive and well, bouncing about my gray matter like Mexican jumping beans.

As for D&B, today was a much better day. The scene veered off in a way I hadn't expected but was much needed. I've also officially gone beyond my 400 page count but I'll deal with that later. For now I just want to get the story down.

So where are you when your ideas hit?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Often my best ideas come to me when I'm in the audience at a musical concert or dance performance. It seems the concentration I'm lending to the performance in front of me, together with the music stimulating me, and probably the generally charged creative atmosphere inside the theatre uncorks the creative genie. Then it's like a split screen - the actual images in front of me and the story program running full tilt inside my mind. Or maybe it's just psychosis.

Rene said...

In the car or mopping the floor. I'm not sure why, but mopping the floor really brings out the brainstorms. I was puzzling over a plot point the other day and I started to mop and bam, the answer slithered right into my mind.

Anonymous said...

My best ideas usually hit me when I'm swimming. On Monday I was swimming my laps, zoning out and thinking about my story when it came to me; the solution to my plot troubles.

Kelly Boyce said...

Swimming huh? Now there's a case for a water logged notebook if I ever saw one.