Plenty in The Fridge
EPISODE 052: PLENTY IN THE FRIDGE
Where do you get your ideas? If you're like me, sometimes they appear out of the blue, but most often it's the result of a catalyst bringing together all the half-formed notions and influences floating around in your mind. Consistently the one catalyst that exposes me to new ideas, and makes new possibilities of those I already had (but often didn't know I had) is conversation. One mind being exposed to another mind. So, speaking of conversation, since where we get our ideas is so important to everyday creativity, let's talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
A couple years ago my publisher and I were having a conversation that started with an awkward confession from me: I was done. "I'd love to write another book, man, but I've got no ideas. I'm empty." That's what I told him. But we kept talking and an hour later I had not only an idea for a new book but a rough sense of what the outline would look like, and a promise that I'd get a contract within a few days. From "I've got nothing" to "I've got a book deal" in 60 minutes. How does that even happen? To answer that I've got to back it up a little.
I have worked with the same editor for 12 years. He's now my publisher and we've become close friends who love working together, and I have a feeling if I told him I had a book of kitten photographs, he'd at least consider it, so this isn't at all about my keen negotiating skills. It's not about book deals, it's about how ideas happen which is an important conversation for anyone who relies on new ideas to push their work forward, or anyone who, having done that work, looks for the next idea and sees, well, nothing. Not at first.
The reason I'm thinking about any of this at all is because my most recent books were published months ago and I've been dreading the inevitable conversation with my publisher and the need to 'fess-up –yet again–and tell him I've got nothing, not the foggiest damn idea what I might write next. Which I did yesterday. And, again, by the end of the conversation I had not one idea but two for my next books. So how does it happen?
I'm David duChemin, and this is episode 052 of A Beautiful Anarchy, let's talk about it.
Music / Intro
Looking back on all the many words I have written over the last 12 years in particular, but even before that as a blogger and comedian, you would think the very last thing I have to worry about is running out. Words are easy. I can find more than enough words. It's ideas that are hard. Not just for writing, but my photography, my business, this podcast. Ideas that get me excited, that feel right, those are much scarcer for me and every time I finish a project I fear that I've hit the end and everything is just going to implode.
And yet it never does. Why? Because my mind, like yours, is never empty. It feels empty in the same way you can look in the fridge and see hundreds of individual ingredients, and still close the door, turn around and complain to no one in particular: "there's nothing to eat in this house!" But there's plenty in there. You could probably make a 10-course meal if you pulled everything out and looked at what you had. You might have to be creative with it, but the fridge isn't usually as empty as it feels, at least not in this metaphor.
When I look into the fridge and complain that there's nothing in there, I'm looking for the wrong thing, and looking in the wrong place. Unless your idea of nutrition is a stack of TV dinners, you won't find a completed meal in the fridge. The fridge is where you find the ingredients. Similarly, when I look into the caverns of my mind for the next big idea, just sitting there ready for me, all figured out and just waiting to be executed, I'm looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. Most of the time my mind is full not of ready ideas, but component pieces, it's full of weird individual thoughts and things I've been obsessing about, partial ideas that don't suggest more complete ideas any more than all those ingredients don't immediately suggest a full meal. But it is almost never empty. Which partly explains how I can start a conversation confessing I've run out of ideas and have nothing left, and finish that same conversation with a really great idea. Or one that feels like it might just have legs. The conversation is where the seemingly unrelated and unimportant component ideas come together. In this case the conversation was with my publisher, but as often as not it's with my wife or my business manager, other friends in other creative fields. And sometimes they're with myself.
Conversations allow me to talk through what I've got. They allow me to open the fridge and let someone else make some suggestions I might never have thought of. And (this is where the metaphor gets a little thin) conversations can introduce new ingredients. Most people we talk to don't carry a much-needed can of garbanzo beans in their pocket, but everyone we talk to has a headful of ideas, experiences, and perspectives. Conversations make those ideas available to us. They reveal possibilities.
Every creative effort, every thing we make, comes from an idea. The more we combine those ideas, the greater the chance one of them is going to intrigue us, spark something, and take us off in a new direction. For people who trade in words, these conversations are often the usual kind: just two people talking, exchanging thoughts, responding to the ideas of the other with ideas of their own, building on and re-arranging those ideas. For musicians the conversation might happen musically while jamming together and riffing off each other. I don't know what the collaborative equivalent is in the medium with which you work, but it's there.
Conversations are about minds being exposed to other minds–not passively, but actively–and allowing that exposure to re-arrange the stuff on our mental shelves, the ingredients to which we've become accustomed and blind. Ever move things around in the pantry or the fridge only to say, "Hey, look at this, I had no idea we had this"? It's the same thing. We benefit from the disruption, from what happens as we talk freely and find ourselves saying things we didn't know we knew, or had completely forgotten was in there. As a sidebar, this is why it's so important to keep a notebook of those little ideas you're so sure you'll never forget, because once they get into that fridge in your mind, sure, they'll keep a long time, but before you know it they'll get shuttled to the back beside that weird jar of pickled eggs, and I'm pretty sure they've been there since the 1980s. It's also why we need to act on our ideas and not save them for a rainy day. Unlike the pickled eggs, ideas don't keep forever, and by the time you find them again, way in the back, the Best Before date might be long past.
Have you ever sat down to think really hard, trying with all your effort to "come up with a great idea"? The pressure almost guarantees it won't happen. It's too conscious. You're looking in the fridge for an omelette and it's not there. But the eggs are. The asparagus, the cheese. When we are too analytical, too specific about what we're looking for, specifically our next good idea, we're censoring ideas as good or bad before we give them a chance. But conversations can remove that pressure and give us a more playful context in which to mix those more elemental ideas–the ingredients, so to speak–and allow them to find new combinations. Conversations are where all the ingredients get thrown in the pan.
This exposure to other minds is why I've always preferred not to be the smartest person in the room. Lucky for me that pursuit has never been a particular challenge. It's why finding friends that think differently and about different things is so important. They carry with them different ingredients. They have different ideas about combining ingredients. But it's also why I love teaching. Students ask great questions, and these force me to look at things differently, have different conversations, explain things in new ways, and maybe look a little more carefully at what's in the fridge.
"Where do you get your ideas?" is a common question. The real answer is most of us keep a brain full of partial ideas, gathered from all over the place, and they get bashed around in the course of normal life and sometimes something amazing results. An epiphany! Hurray! But most of the time it takes a catalyst, a context in which we're forced to dig through all those idea-pieces and see what fits together. Conversations do this, so long as they're conversations in which we're talking about those ideas. Gossip, small talk, and observations about the weather, probably don't count.
Talking to others, especially those with different stories than ours, different areas of expertise and ways of thinking, is just one kind of conversation, but so is doing your work–which feels a little like a conversation in which we talk to, or with, ourselves. You might also look at it as a conversation with the Muse. I usually don't write to express an idea, I write (and re-write) to find my ideas, to figure them out. My writing is a kind of conversation. My photography too. Any creative work can be a kind of conversation, a bashing around of component ideas in hopes of finding the bigger, or more complete ideas to which the smaller ones lead–which is why almost everyone who has ever said anything about the idea of inspiration has said it is to be found in doing our work. Work is a kind of conversation, and though to those watching us it looks like we're just talking to ourselves, our work is where our best ideas get assembled because they're a response to necessity, needed solutions to real problems. Because of this they're often a better fit, not just hypotheticals. It's one thing for me to come up with an initial idea for a book, but that idea will find its best expression–sometimes becoming a different idea entirely–when I'm working it. Fingers on the keyboard, or camera in my hand.
All of this is my way of saying we all feel empty sometimes. But there's probably much more in there than you know. Even without being intentional about it we are all constantly re-stocking the fridge in our minds with little partial ideas, things we read, things we disagree with and about which we are forced to formulate our own thoughts. A song lyric here. An advertisement there. Books. Lots of books, many of which are like conversations of their own, a dialogue between your mind and the minds of people otherwise out of reach, sometimes by geography, often by time.
But it's not enough for me to tell you that you're not the only one who feels empty sometimes. I want to start a conversation, maybe many conversations, between you and other minds. It's very easy, even necessary, for the creative life to be solitary, which was the subject of Episode 049, but it need not always be solitary, and while most of us do our best, and most focused work alone, that does not mean we can't benefit from others digging around the fridge with us once in a while and giving us a fresh perspective, introducing us now and then to new ingredients, and discussing new ways to work with those raw materials.
Life is busy, it's easy to see conversations as frivolous, especially those with no agenda, which is what a long rambling discussion about ideas and what-ifs and "Hey, I just read a book I think you'll find fascinating" can seem like. They can seem like a distraction from the real work, but if they introduce us to new ideas, if they help us see things from new perspectives or introduce new challenges and pull up ideas from the depths, as they so frequently do for me, then they become something worth seeking, and scheduling, and making a priority. The minds we choose to surround ourselves with are important. It might be worth asking if you're surrounding yourself with, or exposing yourself to, minds that help sharpen your own–minds that challenge you, and broaden your perspective–and if you're having enough conversations with those minds.
There's a quote going around that says we are the average of the 5 people we hang out with. I'm not sure if that's based on something more than just some guy's opinion and I'd be curious to know if other influences have been considered, but I can get on board with the heart of the notion more broadly: we are most certainly the average of the voices we allow to influence us, and of the conversations we have with those people. Have more conversations, my friend. Allow them to draw out ideas long forgotten, and help you see them from new angles. Your creative well is deep and full, and, though it doesn't always feel this way: there's plenty in the fridge.
Thank you for listening. I'm humbled by the response this podcast has received. Please continue to share it with those you think might benefit from its encouragement and the conversations it might instigate. If you're not already getting it, I'd love to send you On The Make, which is like an emailed version of the podcast sent out every 4 weeks when the podcast takes a break. Just go to StartUglyBook.com scroll to the bottom and tell me where to send it. And if this, or any episode, lights a spark for you and you want to get in touch with me, you can email me anytime at talkback@abeautifulanarchy.com
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0