Where are you when the page is blank?

Sure Happy Its Thursday or S.H.I.T by any other name.

When I was in the Army, I had a boss one time who was always asking his staff to come up with ideas.  In case you haven’t been in the military, that’s how it’s done.  Some senior officer will say, “I need a plan in case we get attacked by giant sea turtles.  Or the Emperor of Botsalumba, gets nukes and wants to use one.”  The staff comes up with the idea and the general gets the credit.  But back to my old boss.  If we had an idea later on he’d say, “Where were you when the page was blank?”

So, my question this week is:  Where are you when the page is blank?  What do you have to do to get words on the page?  It doesn’t matter if it in front of a computer, an old typewriter or a stack of yellow legal pads.  The pages are blank and you have to come up with the idea.  I have a special place where I get mine but I’ll save that as a teaser so you’ll read to the bottom.

If you get your idea from today’s news, you’re at least a year late.  There was a tragic shooting in Las Vegas recently.  Want to write about a deranged person who shoots up a crowd?  Too late.  It’s been done.  What about a natural disaster that wipes an island almost off the map?  Five years too late.  That’s not to say you can’t use those as the subject, but you’ve got to change it and to do that you have to do your research.  What is your competition?  What was the focus of those books or films?  How long ago?  Sale record?

I’ll be the first to admit if you’re a writer, you (and I) are about a half-bubble off level.  We see things differently.  We hear voices.  We listen to them, hell, we even talk to them some time.  When a normal person asks if the glass is half full or half empty, we wonder who stole the water and if they poisoned the part that’s left.  That’s the start of an IDEA!  Have you ever had a dream that was so realistic that you made notes the next morning and used it in a story?  I have.  And I sold the story.  Where did that idea come from?  No idea, but it came and that’s the point.  Be open to almost anything.  Read everything you can from cereal boxes to headlines in the check-out counter at the grocery store.  Ideas are everywhere.  You can’t copyright an idea and you can’t sell it.  Sit down and write.  Remember not too long ago two guys were sitting around and one asked the other, “I wonder what would happen if a tornado picked up a bunch of sharks and dropped them….”

Where do I get my ideas?  I belong the Idea of Month Club and once a month I get a box from Snake Navel, Arkansas containing thirty ideas…unless the month has 31 days or it’s February.