Ideas and Coincidences

One of the questions most writers get, at one point or another, is, "Where do you get your ideas?" The answers are undoubtedly as varied as the writers--the answers to everything you can ask a writer are as varied as the writers you ask, so why should where ideas come from be any different?

My ideas don't seem to come from any single place--it's more that I put a bunch of different things together because I think they're cool and "ooh, shiny!" I am, in many ways, a magpie; it doesn't surprise me in the least to find my ideas come from the bits and bobs of things that attract me, and from the oddments in my attic of a head (full of useless junk collected for no apparent reason).

My first romance came from a desire to write fiction, the decision to write romance, and a piece of research that started a cascade of "What if...? And what if...? And then what if...?" The fantasy comes from a romantic idea I have of John Donne, of a guy who caused trouble as a youth who then went on to be a thoughtful and intelligent clergyman, a desire to play with the disarray at the end of Elizabeth I's reign, and a wish to consider the necessity of death for change, and the necessity of change for growth.

On the other hand, sometimes ideas are just in the air, available to anyone with sensitive enough antennae. Two or more writers will start working on stories that bear striking resemblance to one another, but the writers didn't know each other, and none of them have friends in common who can pass information along. This isn't my idea--sadly I can't remember for sure who said it or where I heard it--but I believe it happens. First, because it happened to me. There I was, quietly mulling over an idea in the privacy of my own head, when another writer mentioned that she was working on a story that had almost the same premise. Weird but true. (And someday I will write that story I was incubating--and because it's my story, it'll be utterly different than her take the premise.)

An even more extreme example came to light for me this this week when I read two Regency-era romances that had a number of qualities in common:

• A duke named Marcus;
• a ne'er-do-well brother;
• an unwanted marriage brought about by the machinations of a family member;
• and a bride who didn't see herself as appropriate duchess material.

It's not likely the authors borrowed from one another. I don't think they know each other--one lives on the east coast, the other in the midwest. The books came out within a month of each other, which means neither author could have read the other's book and borrowed elements, and the books were published by different publishers.

The most important thing, though, is that the things in common, however uncannily alike they are, are surface details. Everything else is different. The dukes, the duchesses, the ne'er-do-well brothers: All are completely different from one another. The family member who creates the situation and the motivation for doing so are completely different. The details of the plots, the turning points, the lessons to be learned--all the things that make the story unique--were different.

It is a truism that there are a limited number of plots. What that number is varies depending on who you listen to, but the largest number I've ever heard has been in the teens. If hundreds of books come out every month--and they do--then some of those plots have to repeat. A few times. What makes one book different from another?

Execution. Mies van der Rohe said, "God is in the details," and that's as true in fiction as it is in architecture. What each writer does with that plot--whether it's one of three possible, or one of 17--is what makes each book different. Skill is also involved; a truly skilled writer can freshen the tritest idea. But that's execution too.

If you're a writer, what does this mean for you? Well, it means that when someone has the same idea you had, it doesn't mean she somehow stole it. It means that how you tell the story might be more important than the plot itself. It means ideas are strange and wonderful, and they come from a lot of different places, and sometimes they come to more than one of us at a time. What makes a story mine (or yours) isn't just the idea; it's what I do with the idea, how I put my personal stamp, my Katyness, on the idea that makes it mine.

Reading Loon

In the last couple of days I've been realizing, over and over again, that I am a reading loon. More than anything else, my life revolves around reading: what I just finished reading, what I'm reading now, what I'm reading next, what I'm likely to be in the mood for after that...

If you've been reading this blog, you know about my list of books-on-hold at the library, and the books I have out from the library, and the books I own. I've got books coming out of my ears.

So what did I do at lunch today? Jaunted up to Barnes & Noble to pick up a mystery that got a good review and a romance that I've been waiting for all summer long. While I was there, I decided to see if they had a new release from a friend. They did, so off I went to the cash register, three books in hand.

On the way to the register, another book caught my eye, but I didn't have enough money for the three books in my hand and the new one. Since the new one had been shortlisted for the Booker prize, I thought it might be at the library...which just happens to be on the way back the office.

Well, okay, "just happens" isn't quite accurate. A stop at the library had been part of the plan all along--I had my card in my pocket so I could get (for the third time) Alice Hoffman's The River King. Happily the book I'd seen at B&N--Colm Tóibín's The Master: A Novel--was at the library...along with the Hoffman I'd gone there for (and another Hoffman novel, The Foretelling).

When I got back to the office, 45 minutes' brisk walking had yielded a haul of six books, none of which I truly needed in order to have reading material. But when you love to read as much as I do and you're as moody a reader as I am (as in "I'm not in the mood for that"), then there's no such thing as too many books.

Last night I found myself wondering which I could give up if I had to, reading or writing. It wasn't an easy choice--I really need both--but if I had to, I'd give up writing. Heretical though that may be, the reality is I can imagine not writing...but I can't, I truly can't, imagine not reading. Without writing, I become cranky, depressed and gloomy; without reading...

Without reading, I'm not me.

Gone With the Windsors

I finished Laurie Graham's Gone With the Windsors the other night and I'm surprised by how it haunts me.

It's a novel about the "romance" between the Duke of Duchess of Windsor, aka King Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson, told through the journal of a woman who knew Wallis as a schoolgirl in Baltimore. The narrator, Maybell Brumby, is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but Graham manages to tell the Windsor story clearly enough that at the end, I was left feeling that the story is more tragic than romantic. He gave up everything for the "woman he loved", only the woman he loved didn't love the man he was. She loved his title and the thought of what it might bring her . . . and when he gave it up for her, she had no choice but to marry him.

I've been aware of the story for a long time, and have generally thought, "Ewww," when considering both of them. This is not my idea of a great love story. . . mainly because I don't think either of them was a particularly great or even interesting human being. At best, for me they're sort of perversely fascinating for their narrowness and superficiality. But that's all.

What this tells me--and it's something I'm just realizing as I'm writing this--is that for me, a great love story involves people who would be interesting without the great love. One of the reasons I love Anya Seton's Katherine is that Katherine and John both grow as human beings; she grows spiritually, and he develops from a prince ambitious for any throne he can claim to a statesman, long-sighted and wise. They become people I would want to know in real life, and--as presented in the novel--there isn't anything shoddy or self-serving in their love for one another. That's a great love.

Gobsmacked by Consciousness

I've been reading a lot of books on neurobiology lately, research for a workshop that ultimately doesn't have all that much to do with neurobiology. Even though I won't use it for the workshop, the research doesn't seem like a waste to me--I'm so endlessly curious that entanglement in thickets of information is always time well spent for me.

One of the results of the reading is that I'm gobsmacked by consciousness. It's one of those things you can't really remember not experiencing, so it's always there. You take it for granted. But no one knows what it is or why it happens... The thing that really astonishes me is that I can share my conscious experiences with someone whose had completely different conscious experiences, and we can both believe there's overlap between those experiences. There might not be any overlap, but we can still function as if there is. That's really amazing, if you think about it.

The other thing I'm having a hard, yet deeply interesting, time wrapping my head around is that consciousness is not continuous. It's much more like watching a movie: a series of still pictures that the brain turns into a continuous stream. How do we do that? Why do we do that? There isn't a consciousness center in the brain; it's a much more complex and elusive process than that. And some of what it does is counter-intuitive sleight-of-hand--I have a vague and muddled recollection that we act and then the part of the brain that would be involved in deciding to act lights up. So first the act, then the decision to act, and the brain cons us into thinking the decision is followed by the act--"Never mind the man behind the curtain, look at the shiny rings!" (I'm probably completely garbling the details, but I am sure that it was as peculiar and inside out as what I've described...)

If you want to read some of the books I've read and really enjoyed (and been startled by), I can particularly recommend Diane Ackerman's An Alchemy of Mind and Shannon Moffett's The Three-Pound Enigma. Both books are lively, interesting, well-written and informative; both changed the way I look at my own little noodle. Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens was fascinating, even if a little dry and even if a good portion of it went sailing over my head.

I Have Yielded

Prompted by Cherry Red, I called the library today to find out if they could help me with Rumspringa. The answer was no. "There's not really anything we can do."

So I cancelled the request and reinstated it. I'm 14th in line now, but I have some hope of getting the book, instead of waiting forever and ever and ever.

Sometimes you just have to know when to say, "Never mind."

Beaten to the Punch

Well, it happened. A book from a branch library went through the Transit Hold system faster than Rumspringa. Actually, two managed: Gone With the Windsors and The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry. I'll pick them both up tomorrow or the day after--I still have 20+ unread library books here, so no shortage of things to read.

So what am I reading now? Their Ancient Glittering Eyes: Remembering Poets and More Poets by Donald Hall. I'm also eyeing A Pelican In The Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries And Recluses by Isabel Colegate and Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain by Antonio Damasio.

On the other hand, I might just pick up Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses; I just finished her An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain. One of the many things I loved about that book was her pure relish in the information she was conveying, her excitement and idiosyncratic joy in what she had to share. I'm still delighting in her remark that what excited neurons mostly communicate is how excited they are. I love that.

And someday, Rumspringa will finally arrive, and that's what I'll be reading...

Two books a-waiting

I have two books waiting for me on Monday...and neither one of them is Rumspringa. I'm really having fun with this.

The new book must have been returned to the main branch today--I don't think they trundle books between the branches on the weekend. So, like yesterday's book, I don't think it was every really in the race.

But still...

I'm starting to wonder if all the books I have on hold--14, I think, if you don't count Rumspringa--will come in before Rumspringa.

On a side note, I hope this doesn't sound like I'm picking on my library, because I'm not. For me, this is more about the vagaries of the universe and the way expectation and reality diverge than anything else. I adore my library system and am more grateful for it and the people who work in it than I can say.

It's a Race!

Well, my adventures on Transit Hold continue.

No, Rumspringa didn't come in. (We're going to say it's been 10 days today and start a countdown.) However, two other books went on Transit Hold today: Gone with the Windsors by Laurie Graham and Dark Angels by Karleen Koen. Which means we now have a race.

Which book will come in first? Rumspringa? Or Gone with the Windsors? I'm not counting Dark Angels since that was on hold only long enough to be received by the main library--it didn't really travel.

I borrow books from the library when I'm trying a new-to-me author (the library's great for exploration) or when the book in question is something I'm unlikely to read again. If I'm not going to read it again, then I have to do something with it if I buy it. If I borrow it, not so much. I've read both of Karleen Koen's previous books--Through A Glass Darkly and Now Face to Face--and enjoyed both, but I've never re-read either, nor felt any desire to do so. So, library it is.

Gone with the Windsors got a good review that intrigued me (not all good reviews do), so I put it on hold. If I don't like it, back it goes, no harm, no foul...

Argh... or maybe not

After a while, some annoying things start to become amusing.

For me, anyway.

I love my library. I love it with all the ardor of my bibliophilic soul--all those books, two blocks away. All those books, throughout the whole system, just a mouse click away. And all those DVDs and videotapes and CDs and books on tape...

It's a smorgasbord.

Right now I have 20 items--books and DVDs on hold. Some of the books and DVDs are checked out. Some are on order and haven't come in yet. For most of them, there's a waiting list, so I'm 15th or 20th in line. I can check to see where my requests stand--am I still 15th? Or have I moved up the list to 13th? I can also see when something's on its way to me--its status changes from "Active" to "Transit Hold". That means "my" copy has been returned at a branch and will be coming to me shortly.

Shortly generally means within a couple of days.

Generally.

A book I requested back in June--yes, the system shows when you placed the request--is on Transit Hold. It's been on Transit Hold for what seems like a couple of weeks now. It's been at least 10 days now--I thought for sure it would be ready for me before the long weekend.

When it became clear that the book was taking the long way to get to me, my first reaction was annoyance. "Come on, come on, come on, what's taking so looooongggg???" I was annoyed for a few days.

Now I'm entertained. I'm curious to see how long it's going to take the book to get to me. Weeks? A month? I'm starting to wonder if the book itself will be a letdown after all the fun I'm having, waiting for it. This kind of feels like a contest--and I'm ferociously competitive--to see who'll blink first. Will the book arrive first? Or will I break down and call the library to find out what's going on?

Fortunately for me, I'm not without reading material--I have 25 books out of the library and literally hundreds of my own that I can read. So I think I'm winning this contest.

The book? Rumspringa : to be or not to be Amish by Tom Shachtman

Open to surprises

Years and years ago--before I met the beloved--I went out on a date to have dinner and see a play. I ordered some kind of grilled or roasted chicken breast that came with roasted red potatoes and broccoli stalks. The chicken breast was tiny; the potatoes were few. I hated broccoli, but I was still hungry, so I cut off a floret and popped it into my mouth, ready to wash it down with Pepsi if it was as awful as I feared it would be.

It was fabulous. It had been steamed to the perfect point of crispness, and there was an aroma of lemon that brought out the fresh sweetness of the broccoli. In that moment, broccoli became my favorite vegetable--one I love so much that I even like it overcooked.

Several years after that, I joined Weight Watchers, and that forced me to make wholesale changes in my diet. Changes I wanted to make, mind you, but my response to those changes surprised me.

I love vegetables. Who knew? I'm not as much of a carnivore as I thought I was; I'd just as soon get my protein from beans and nuts. I'm seriously considering buying a vegetable cookbook, so I can expand my repertoire.

I need to remember this when I'm confronted with change, with new things that intimidate me, with things I'm sure I won't like. I'm a work in progress, and that means something that was true three years ago might not be true now...and if this is something I've never done before, I might be surprised by the result. If I've never done it before, I don't know it won't work. I don't know that I wasn't designed for this thing all along.

The only way I'll ever know is to try it.