{"id":5037,"date":"2012-09-20T06:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2012-09-20T06:00:37","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T11:00:37","slug":"the-creativity-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5037","title":{"rendered":"The Creativity Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Creativity<\/a>This has been a good year for writing. Thanks, in part, to the Cafe, I’ve written — and completed — more short stories this year than the past five years combined. And one of my new stories has been accepted for an upcoming anthology.<\/p>\n

Yet, even with all this writing, I still have more stories to write. (There’s always another deadline.) Right now, I’m working on a short story for an anthology about djinn.<\/p>\n

It’s a cliche that readers ask writers where they get their ideas. The question frustrates some writers and enrages others. (Personally, I don’t think anyone has ever asked me. Maybe they don’t think much about my ideas.)<\/p>\n

You might think a writer has some direct line to the cosmic ether where imagination and creativity co-exist like smoke and light, in shades of color and formlessness. But the truth is much more mundane than that.<\/p>\n

My Creativity Well, as I call it, is a bottomless reserve of ideas that is constantly replenished by my experiences. I hear a funny joke, I store it away. I see something heartbreaking, I hold onto it. I hear a beautiful sound (like cicadas on a summer evening or a child’s laugh), I keep it for later.<\/p>\n

Writing a story is a bit like taking a test. I sit down at the computer and begin to regurgitate all my experiences pertinent to the story. Even if I’ve never been in a SoHo art gallery or a haunted mansion in the 1920s, I gather up my experiences (and research!) to make the scene as realistic as possible.<\/p>\n

“But…” I hear you ask, “What about those crazy ideas that writers are always coming up with? Where do you get those?”<\/p>\n

And to that, I would simply say, “Everywhere.”<\/p>\n

Stories that may seem crazy to one person are just life to someone else. I’ve read stories of people living lives I couldn’t begin to imagine, but they are 100 percent real. Stories are all around us. So when I make up a story that seems crazy to you, it’s just an ordinary day at the office to me.<\/p>\n

My world is filled with aliens, superheroes, sorcerers, monsters, and horrible creatures that have names too old to be remembered. I have probably forgotten more about alien conspiracy and Area 51 than most people will ever know. I’ve seen things that could — at best — be described as my mind playing tricks on me, but deep in my heart I know they were real.<\/p>\n

So, when I write, I’m not really making up anything. My characters are facets of my family, friends, co-workers, and strangers I meet.\u00a0Sure, I’m telling a story. But I’m not creating anything. I’m borrowing moments from throughout my life and stringing them together to make an interesting narrative.<\/p>\n

And that, dear reader, is the truth about where writers get their ideas. We don’t create anything. We just remember the world in a different way.<\/p>\n

Shameless plug: I write about creativity (where it comes from and how to nurture it) over at my blog, The Creativity Well<\/a>. Since joining the Cafe, I post only occasionally over there. But you should stop by every now and then. You never know when I might add something.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been a good year for writing. Thanks, in part, to the Cafe, I’ve written — and completed — more short stories this year than the past five years combined. And one of my new stories has been accepted for an upcoming anthology. Yet, even with all this writing, I still have more stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[235,1069],"class_list":["post-5037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-creativity","tag-story-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}