Ideas

A few weeks ago a friend posed the question: "Where do you get ideas for your writing?"

Answer?

Well, one in respect this is easy to answer, but in another respect, difficult. On the easy front . . . I've never lacked for ideas to write about. In fact, I have entire notebooks (like dozens of notebooks) scrawled with outlines of ideas for essays, articles, and books. Some of these are one or two words, or a few sentences. And other ideas are more expansive, sometimes consuming dozens of pages, with outline, chapter headings and such.

But while ideas are easy to come by, great ideas are a bit more elusive. Most ideas don't generate enough heat to warrant my tossing a handful of kerosene words into the mix.

However, in case anyone is interested in where some of my recent ideas have come from, here's a few of the pieces I am currently writing, or will soon be engaged in writing--along with the genesis of each.

My next column for Together magazine will be about summer weddings . . and the ideas here were recently generated on Facebook when some of my other pastor friends began back-and-forthing about their padded honorariums and wedding horror stories. I can't pass up an opportunity to weigh in on some of this banter.

I have three new humor essays I'm working on--each of which I intend to send first to The New Yorker for Shouts and Murmurs. One of these will be entitled, "Sanitized for Your Protection" (my humorous thoughts on motel toilet seat usage), another will be entitled, "Objects in Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear" (this is rife with driving humor) and the third, "Football Chaplain", is a piece I am reworking from twenty years ago . . . a humor piece which was, by the way, rejected by Roger Angell at The New Yorker who told me in a handwritten rejection, "This is quite good . . . hope you will submit again." It's one of the few rejection letters I've kept nearby. Well, Mr. Angell, it's twenty years later, and I'll be sending it again!

And, most recently I've also written essays about beavers (idea: from kayaking down Whitelick creek), President Benjamin Harrison and the American flag (idea: generated from wondering how the Indianapolis Monument Circle, and the proliferation of American flags during Harrison's administration, might be related). I'm also gathering information about R. F. Outcault, one of America's first comic strip creators and an ancestor, and I've been reading a profusion of books about turn-of-the-century New York newspapers and biographies of Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, and others in order to gain a greater depth and clearer perception of those times and Outcault's role in the rise of American journalism.

Finally, I have, during the month of May, written three very good Christmas stories (don't ask me why May was the month for this . . . .) My daughter, Chelsey, will be painting a cover for one of these stories which I will share with the congregation on Christmas eve, and I've submitted two of these to publishers for consideration as children's books. Where did I get the ideas for these? From the Bible. From my imagination. From the air around me (?).

Where do other ideas come from? From conversations, overheard conversations, imagined conversations, from television snippets, from reading the newspaper, from Facebook, from books, from more books, from the Bible (yes, it's a wealth of ideas!!) and from sitting in silence at four a.m. with a cup of coffee, or sitting alone at midnight on the back porch listening to the call of the coyote and wondering, where does the coyote sleep during the day?

Ideas are everywhere. But the secret is writing them down . . . condensing and distilling them. And then maybe, perhaps, possibly . . . I sit down to write about one of them.