Avi

word craft

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Ideas are patient

IdeasAs dis­cussed before, read­ers’ inter­est and curios­i­ty as to where writ­ers’ ideas come from has no end. Replies vary, of course, but writ­ers usu­al­ly respond to the ques­tion in the con­text of a recent book, and there­fore, ref­er­ence some expe­ri­ence, learned fact, or per­cep­tion equal­ly recent. That may be, as it were, short-sight­ed. I am cur­rent­ly work­ing on two books. One is based on a sto­ry I heard some thir­ty years ago. A man I met told me about a part of his life, some­thing that hap­pened to him, an expe­ri­ence, which I had nev­er heard relat­ed. It fas­ci­nat­ed me. It also stayed in my head. 

My sec­ond sto­ry was some­thing I had read about years ago, too, a quirky moment in his­to­ry, which, at the time was sig­nif­i­cant, but today is nev­er men­tioned. Again, it stayed in my mind, along with the thought that some­day I must write about that. Exact­ly why these events rose to the sur­face of my work now I can­not say, only that they did.

I am aware that I am being slight­ly coy by not telling you more. But, after all, I am writ­ing these sto­ries and some­day, hope­ful­ly, you will read them. 

My point how­ev­er is this: Ideas can be long-last­ing. They can take decades to ripen, and hope­ful­ly, to flower. Some­times ideas have to wait for the writer to come to terms with them, or real­ize their poten­tial. Some­times it is a ques­tion of gain­ing courage or insight to deal with these ideas. Ideas are patient. 

When writ­ers despair that they have no ideas, I sug­gest that that they reach deep with­in them­selves. You may be aston­ished by what you find—and how ready such ideas are—now—for your pen.

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