Do you get story ideas or do story ideas get you?
Don't be afraid to let your subconscious take the reins for a while
If you write for long enough, and enough people know about your literary proclivities, eventually a well-meaning person will ask, “So where do you get your ideas from?”
The anthropologist in you might reply, “I study people, how they talk and interact and hide from themselves.” And the physicist in you might respond, “I extrapolate from current scientific trends to predict where humanity will be in the future.” And the historian in you might respond, “I was inspired by the complex relationships of aristocratic families in 14th century France.” And the mystic in you might respond, “They bubble up from an unknown and unknowable place, what some call God and others call the unconscious.”
Ideas are slippery things. In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes posits a question of the reader: When you are asked to name the thing you are reading this on, e.g. a “laptop” or '“phone” or “PC,” or “Kindle,” or “book,” where does that word come from? “You,” that is the conscious “doer,” didn’t rifle through your memory like an archivist hunting through stacks at a library for a title. It’s not a conscious thing, the recall of words. The magic happened beyond your awareness. In my experience, the best ideas, the ones that stick with me, that I am most excited to write about, also arise from that same unknown place.
I’ve written about flow states in the past, how we should seek to enter them by reducing distraction. If you attempt this often, eventually you will reach a state where you are only partly conscious of what is occurring. Something arises, much like the recall of specific words, beyond your awareness. This is your subconscious working. This is the Jungian realm of archetypes. This is the spirit world of shamans. This is the place from which Appalachian snake handlers speak in tongues. This is where improvised guitar solos come from and this is where interpretive dancers intuit their next movement.
It’s a bit like the moments before sleep, the so-called hypnogogic state, where consciousness fades and the unconscious usurps reality. Except we hang on. We don’t completely slide into unconsciousness. We ride the wave of ideas bubbling up from the quantum foam. We write down words. In a sense, we are our own amanuensis.
This is all a mystical, cryptic way of saying I’ve been trying to come up with an idea for a novel. I have to be vague here, because the ink isn’t dry yet. But let’s just say I recently sold something to a publisher. A very cool something to a very big publisher. And my agent suggested that I also pitch them a novel, and potentially have two concurrent things released at the same time.
And so I needed an idea. I always have ideas. But novels are hard. They are long and complicated, and in my experience take at least a year to write. And if I am going to devote so much time and effort towards something I need to absolutely love it.
I had a few ideas, but I didn’t love them. I tried to use my left brain, my thinking brain, to come up with something. The ideas were okay, but felt dry, devoid of inspiration. I had to love the idea, or I wouldn’t be motivated to work on it. I decided to not consciously think about it. I decided to hand it over to my subconscious, and let it do the work. I decided to let it tell me what to write.
A strange thing happened. Once I let go, once I stopped trying to force ideas to arise, ideas bubbled up from out of nowhere. I met some friends for dinner, and on the subway ride home, idea after idea after idea came to me. I wrote it all down on my phone, afraid all the found gold would slip through my fingers.
I now have a novel idea I’m excited about. It’s still inchoate, still forming. But it feels good, and that’s a promising sign.
If you asked me where these new ideas came from, I might say, “I came up with them.” But that would be lying. I didn’t “come up with them” any more than I came up with the word “cup” when naming the object next to me holding my coffee. My subconscious did the hard work, and all I did was allow myself the space to listen.
If you haven’t heard, I just released my first non-fiction title: Dispatches from the Outer Deep: A Guide to Writing, Editing, Submitting and Publishing Short and Long Fiction. It’s doing really well, and a few days ago it was Amazon’s #1 new release in writing books!
If you’ve already purchased the book, thank you! I truly appreciate your support. And if you found the book helpful, I’d love if you might leave a review. Every bit helps!
And if you haven’t gotten the book yet, I hope you’ll consider getting a copy for yourself or friend or significant other. By getting a copy, you’re helping me support this blog and my writing. So thank you! 🙏
