Inspiration and the Stove-Top Method

Hey, folks! This week I thought I'd like to talk about my own creative process when it comes to dreaming up new ideas, and take a look specifically the most common questions that I get asked when I speak to people who are maybe meeting me for the first time or who have just learned that I'm a writer. Typically the question I hear most often is "where do your ideas come from?" And the short answer for that question is that any new story I get excited about is almost-guaranteed to be an amalgamation of literally dozens of influences in my environment. Television shows, music, theatre, podcasts, movies, comic books, my own life, current affairs/news, and, of course, other books. Anything that strikes a chord with me tonally, or that contains a clever plot device which I like or a particular character archetype, or relational dynamic, or environment/setting, or cultural more, can be something which I will assimilate into the project I'm currently working on or one of the next ones I have lined up, like adding muscles and flesh to a skeleton. Take a look at this quote from NYT-bestselling author, VE. Schwab in 2019:

"I treat my (creative) process like a 6-burner stove. A few projects are always left to simmer on low heat while I’m cooking the one on high."

Schwab has elaborated on this metaphor in greater detail in a number of interviews and podcasts available online, and from the moment I heard it I related to this process SO HARD. Essentially, there is always going to be one 'main pot on the stove that you are actively cooking up'; one project/book which you're most excited about and which becomes your current focus (only you can know what this is, and it's just a gut feeling you'll have based on how you feel when you consider the concept) but also, hopefully, a few other ideas rattling around waiting for their turn in the spotlight. As you go about your life, consuming media and taking inspiration from wherever it is you get your inspiration, sometimes pieces - ingredients, if you will - will come to you, and you can decide whether it would be best suited to the current recipe or to another one, to be used at a later date. If that's the case, it's often helpful to have a notebook/document/spreadsheet somewhere where you're able to compile all of your ideas for a given project, as it may be years before you ever get around to deciding it's time to bring that 'pot' to the main burner and begin work on it.

An example of a recent idea that came to me was while watching a TV series my wife and I have been enjoying lately - The Last Kingdom. The protagonist and a group of his Saxon allies were tasked with negotiating with their enemy, the Danes, for the release of a prisoner, whose identity was undisclosed but who was said to be of great personal importance to the Saxon king, Alfred. Now, in this particular episode the plot went in a completely different direction, and the unnamed prisoner ended up just being one of Alfred's chief subordinates, but by this point I had got to daydreaming and imagined a 'What If?' scenario (most of my good ideas come this way) and speculated about an alternate possibility in which the prisoner held by the enemy was, unknown to all but a few, the ACTUAL King Alfred, and the one giving the allies their orders was a decoy - or rather, a high-ranking subordinate pretending to be Alfred so as A) not to crush the spirits of the Saxon army when they discovered their king was being held captive by the Danes, and B) to hopefully prevent the Danes from realising the REAL worth of their hostage. Now, I know there's nothing fundamentally original about this plot device - there are no new ideas under the sun, after all - but it's a dynamic that, to me at least, feels exciting, thrilling, dramatic, and has the potential to be written in a way that engages a reader by ramping up the tension. So, once I had reduced the device down to its essence; "an antagonist holds a hostage of high value to the protagonist, but very few realise just HOW valuable they are" I was ready to make use of it in one of my own stories at some stage.

I use this as an example because, as a plot device, it just doesn't fit into the project I'm working on at the moment. The very concept of hostages, of negotiation, of entire groups of people at odds with one another, is just not something that would gel with the story I'm writing right now, which is smaller, more personal-stakes-type tension, less external conflict and more internal. it wouldn't fit. But I still like it as a dynamic, as a device for building intrigue and tension through this idea of duplicity and subterfuge. So it goes into another pot. Which pot? That's for you to decide. Where do you feel naturally drawn toward? If there isn't a clear option, it's best not to force it. Put that ingredient into your fridge - create another spreadsheet/document/note for miscellaneous ideas that haven't got a home yet, and store it there. Refer to the fridge often, and see if anything has changed in a week, or a month. You never know when inspiration will strike.

This week's REC is - in a complete contrast to the topic of last week's blog - setting up restrictions on your social media apps and enforcing them. I was noticing myself spending far too much time scrolling through Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit, sometimes on a loop, and then coming away from it feeling the guilt associated with wasting time that I could have been using more beneficially. Not to say that you need to be productive all the time - downtime is important - but I believe very few people if they were honest with themselves would say that they find social media to be truly relaxing, or a net-positive to their mental health. I've noticed a dramatic change in my mood, for the better since I switched off those apps (I let myself have ten minutes a day, just to check in) and now when I find myself reaching for my phone in quiet time I'm going to the Libby or Kindle app and reading a book in that time. (Doesn't have to be books - If music relaxes you more than reading, that's just as good.) But get off social media as much as you can. Your mind and mood will thank you for it.

Talk at you again in 2 weeks.

-R