The Anecdote

Recently, I was huddled in the shower with half my clothes on at two in the morning, like a totally normal person. I had a chest infection that would only let my lungs work in a cloud of hot steam, and I just wanted to breathe. Out of habit, I started thinking. Trying, again, to have a good idea.

They say you have your best ideas in the shower. I have been trying to have good ideas in the shower since I first heard this, around age 12. But maybe it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t work if you’re trying, like falling in love or inventing matches.

It’s not that I’m wanting for ideas in general. I mean, I do have times when my brain just sort of turns into 1930s Oklahoma and has nothing in it but dust, and I do have to try some workarounds for this if I feel super dedicated to idea-having. But a lot of the time, ideas are like acne or menstrual cycles: they keep happening to me, whether I want them or not. Ideas about landscaping, building stuff, photography, naughty things to do with garden gnomes, excursions, experiences, T-shirts, repairs, businesses, the connections between Katy Perry song lyrics and ancient Egyptian mythology, wood projects, art, writing, both fiction and non; I can’t even track them, remember them, or sometimes, make sense of them.

The trouble is having good ideas – ideas that go somewhere.

In this instance, leaning against the tile with some of my pants on, my first idea was carnivorous warehouse.

Yeah. I don’t know.

Presumably, this was a writing idea of some sort. But it was gibberish, so I tried again. This time, the grabby prize-claw in my brain dropped fisherman is haunted by taxidermied fish.

That was at least a full thought. It’s not a story, though. What’s going to happen? How does it end? What’s the point?

The Problem

And we come to the problem. I have a writing idea. So what?

This issue comes up whenever I try to write. Fiction, nonfiction, social media posts, blog posts, Moby-Dick slashfic, doesn’t matter. Whether I’m writing about made-up haunted fish or the actual black market eel trade or how people have historically made various dyes out of invertebrates, what am I saying that hasn’t been said by someone else a hundred times? What makes it hang together? Why should anyone care? Is there anything, in short, that doesn’t make this a big nothingburger?

The (Tentative Attempt at a) Solution

Truthfully, I don’t have a good method for overcoming this. Being in a shower does not seem to fix it for me; others’ experiences may vary. But the problem seems to consist of a) finding a conclusion or climax to build to, and/or b) finding a fresh angle to make it worth saying. To find any of those, I think, the key is to ask yourself questions that can push the frog in your brain out of its well. In an effort to do that, I’ve come up with a few examples and written them out, because I never remember to do this in the moment and just sort of twirl around in frustration. Hopefully, this can help someone else, too:

1. How do I make this weirder? (If nonfiction, can I present it in an unusual way, or shift the focus to a less-explored subject?)

   

2. Is there anything from my own perspective or experience that I can use to change the angle?
3. Do I feel anything about this? Could I get someone else feel that way about it?
4. What if I approach this from the opposite perspective? Or a different species? (If “the opposite perspective” is repugnant, can I use story, allegory, satire?)
5. Can I use this to link or compare historical events to the present world? How about the “natural” world to the “civilized” world? Animal to human? Are there opposing or distant forces I can draw a line between? Cause and effect?
6. Whose perspective or story might be missing from this?
7. What if I add or remove lions? (Or dinosaurs, bears, nanobots, feral hogs — dealer’s choice…)
8. What would be unexpected here? Can I insert it, or is it hidden in plain sight and I just need to show it
9. What was the last thing I watched/read/listened to that stuck with me or engaged me, and why do I think it did? Could I employ some of whatever that is?
10. Is there a particular trope that I like (or that other people like), or theme, that I could use here? What if I invert it?
11. If I am writing about a real-world problem, can I find a lesser-known solution that people could implement? Is there an approach that does not come up over and over again in other content farms’ search results?
12. What would happen if this occurred in a completely different environment? Sky to sea, land to deep ocean, earth to space, real-world to fantasy-world?

I’m sure there could be more of these, but that’s all I have at the moment. Still, I hope these can help when you or I are huddled in future showers. Or, you know, standing. Or washing up, or singing, or having sex. Whatever it is people do while they think about the doings of haunted fish.