It has been a while since I last wrote and its all because I've been quite busy trying to put together presentations and essays for both this summer and the fall. After that, I'm hoping to slow down a bit and concentrate on my biography and some fictional work that I've got to finish. I said earlier that I was going to slow down but I made no specific plan to do so and before I knew it I was again over committed. Much of the work to be done is not urgent, meaning that I have the time to do it, but it does take its toll. More important, it keeps me from doing other things, like reading, taking long walks or invigorating old acquaintances. All of those are important to a writer and historians as it is in being engaged that we get our ideas and our story plots.
I have a new friend in San Antonio--Julian--who is the ultimate writer. When I got a chance to meet him for the first time, he spoke about how he got his story ideas, most of which came in conversations with friends, acquaintances, strangers and anyone he met during the day. While he, I and two other friends talked and joked, he was counting out the story ideas that he gathered from our conversations. He is a funny guy and had us laughing out loud but he never lost his writer's radar. He reminded me--not that I need to be, though a friend there was learning something for the first time--that writers/historians/playwrights, etc. hear conversations and see things differently from others who engage in conversation and view things for their immediate impact. Those who engage the written word should always be deciphering, assessing and storing information. At the same time, we can't be like movie critics who go to the movies and never enjoy them because they are deconstructing and reviewing instead of watching. We must watch, listen but hopefully we've trained our ears and other senses to quickly pick up things and to store them.
That is why it is important to have journals and notebooks where we write our impressions and retell the day's activities and things we learned. Sharing them in letters or e-mails with people who will engage with them is also a good idea.I don't do as great a job as I should but I do have numerous journals and notebooks all over the house and office with tidbits, paragraphs and other notes--and numerous e-mail discussions with friends and colleagues--and at one time or another I've come back to them for insight or simply for ideas.
I never leave home--that is for long trips--without some notebook or journal because I find that in buses, airplanes and hotel rooms I always have something to write about. Most important in having these notebooks is that I don't have to make too much sense or write beautiful paragraphs because these are simply ideas, phrases or words that will jar something within me, usually days, months or even years later. They are valuable because they are raw and written with the passion felt at the moment. Unlike notes that we take for a research project or an academic essay they are not just reference points or attributions, they all are, or can be, seeds for further thought.
I knew a fellow years ago who use to carry a small recorder around with him so that he could record himself or others and then take time to listen to what he had heard and said during the day. We have all faced the situation that we remember we said, heard, or thought of something "brilliant" but can't remember what it was.
Most writing is an accumulation of things we've heard, thought of, said, read or experienced. Even scholarly work is developed in such a manner. Yet, because we are at times lax in "gathering and taking it home with us" we lose the seed of what could be important work. There are accumulated somewhere in the space that hovers over us many books and articles, short stories, plays and novels that will never be written because we misplaced or never collected the ideas. I actually think that is the reason why some smart, good writers never go beyond the stage of "wishing" to write a good work. Or they write the first one but can't never get the second one out. They think that all they have to do is research and plan out a project and the inspiration will come. But it doesn't work that way. Ideas like seeds must be watered and fed constantly, often times long before we start trying to put them into written form. When we gather and accumulate those seeds, we don't always know what will grow but we are certain that in time we will be weeding, fertilizing, pruning and then stepping back to watch something grow. Writing is often like that. It is the end product of a long process that can take months, years and even decades. The seed for my latest book I gathered nearly 30 years ago and my novel was likewise a flowering of something gathered and begun nearly that long ago.
When we gather seeds, create works and then spread the seeds that come of them we are likely to find that they too will blossom though it may take a long time. That approach has made me productive and I always have more than one idea floating in my head, the key, however, is that those are seeds which have been nurtured for years and been germinating just as long. So even when it seems that I've come up with a "new" idea, it is usually not that new.
