Where Do Ideas Come From?
Opening the Wellsprings of Creativity

by David Poyer

The two most common questions I get at writers' conferences are, "Do you use a computer" -- which sounds like a wise question but is actually foolish -- and "Where do you get your ideas," which sounds like a foolish question, but is actually very wise.

I don't think it matters a damn what you write with. We can write the same line with a turkey feather, a Mont Blanc, a Mackintosh -- or by setting it in the printing office, straight out of the type box, as Bret Harte is said to have done. It is the quality of the output that is important. If the output is the same, the intervening processes are subject only to the test of efficiency. So we're not going to talk about computers. And we're not going to talk about getting an agent, either.

But if I wanted to rephrase that initial, naive-sounding question into a form that doesn't sound quite so simplistic, it might come out: "How can we better establish that link with our unconscious from which all the great writers say their best work comes; but from which I myself (the writer who's asking the question) can only hear faint echoes, or, most of the time, nothing at all?" Phrased that way, doesn't the question sound a little less foolish? It IS important. There's nothing MORE important. It's at the root of all fiction and poetry. So let's settle down and think about it. About the mysterious Word with which all art originates; and how we can persuade, beg, or force whatever hand descends from whatever cloud to communicate it to us. Where DO ideas come from? And: How can we make them come to US?

Let me tell you about two dreams I had not long ago. In the first, someone formerly close to me sliced off my penis during the act of sex. In fact, it wasn't just sliced off, it was cut into several sections. The way I responded to this was to build myself a wooden framework and begin cementing the severed sections back together using my own blood as an epoxy. Later, I found that they had grown back together, and worked, if anything, better than before.

The second dream concerned a plot by Catholic priests to turn all the gold in the world into magically animated worms, which would then wriggle and fly to their headquarters in California.

I recount these dreams not to shock or amuse, but in order to point out that during the first dream, as unlikely as this whole procedure was, at no time did I think, This is impossible, or This is unlikely, or This blood is not going to work as a glue. And in the second, I never wondered whether priests really had these magical powers, or whether their headquarters might be in Italy rather than California.

Has this ever happened to you? That you've awakened from a dream remembering things that were highly unlikely, were crazy and contrary to the rules of common sense, were immoral, unfashionable, impossible for you to do. But at no time, when you were dreaming, did anything within you say, This is unlikely, impossible, or contrary to the rules of nature or man?

This leads me to think that there are three separate functions in our brain. Either that, or something outside ourselves speaks to us while we are asleep. Both theories have had their adherents among artists. This morning I'm going to treat them as separate faculties, or separate programs in the brain; but in the end, as at the end of everything, there lies an irreducible mystery.

THE CREATIVE

The first faculty we'll talk about is the Creative. It corresponds to Freud's Id. Most ancient poets personified it as the Muse.

Let's go back to this dream state. It occasionally happens that I come back with a clear recollection of gazing on pages from some mysterious place beyond, from the recesses of the mind or the archives of the collective unconscious -- pages far better than anything I've ever written consciously, as the result of rational, waking work.

I believe that we all possess a huge reservoir of creativity. However, we usually have access to it only through a very, very narrow channel. With great coaxing, from time to time a few tiny drops trickle through. John Ashbery comes very close to the same thought when he says "Poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream. One can let down one's bucket and bring the poem up." Note the same metaphor -- of flowing, lifegiving water.

When I return from one of these "access dreams," and realize how much there is back there -- how easy it is to write in the dream state, but how hard it is to bring any of it back -- the only conclusion I can reach is that something powerful must inhibit the creative process during our waking life.

Now, between the dark and the light there exists a half-dream country. We pass through it just before sleep, or just after waking. In this drowsing state we see things we'd never imagine waking -- and we don't object to them too much. It's as if we're there, observing the creative faculty at work.

This is the second faculty: The "Watcher." It neither thinks nor feels. It simply observes what goes on. Most of us think of it as, in the last analysis, ourselves. It corresponds to the Ego, and we can personify it as the Soul.

Now let's talk about the third aspect of our artistic trinity. It's easy to perceive him as a bad guy. He isn't, not entirely. He's just very powerful, and he works hard. But if we understand him, he'll be a strong partner. He's the person inside my head who says NO. He says no to various things, for various reasons. In the first case, he's quick to warn me of danger. He warns me when things are impossible, or contrary to physical law.

For example, when I contemplate even for a moment stepping off a bridge that has no handrail, he tells me a) that this is dangerous b) contrary to the law of gravity and c) likely to result in damage to myself. Or, if I look at a woman not my wife with what Jimmy Carter used to call Lust in his Heart, he's there to remind me I might get a disease; I might get her pregnant; I'd definitely get in trouble with my wife; I'd feel guilty afterward . . . in other words, I'd quickly get a large load of negative messages. (However, that doesn't mean you can't offer . . . . !)

Now, I conclude from this that there's a part of our brain that only operates when we're awake that gives us these NOs. I call this faculty the Critic. We can personify it mythologically as Minos, the stern judge. It corresponds to the psychoanalytical Superego. Now, I'll be the first to point out that the majority of these messages are necessary. They're life-preserving. They let us live in a state of civilization. Moreover, they're essential for us as writers. The problem is that we as artists have to deal somewhat differently with the Critic, with all three aspects of our psyches, than most people do. When the normal person writes a line, he gets a loud chorus of "that's not spelled right. That's inadequate. That's not what I meant to say. That's not as good as Jane Smiley, or even Helen Steiner Rice."

The artist can't afford to operate that way. Sober and awake, we have to do something normal people do only in sleep or madness. Somehow, we must silence the Critic, and gain direct access to the Creative.

Here are twelve ways to do it.

DREAMS

Eugene Ionesco said: "I always use what remains of my dreams of the night before." William Burroughs: "Many characters have come to me . . . in a dream, and then I'll elaborate from there. I always write down all my dreams." Carl Jung: "The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness . . . "

The first technique is the one I've already mentioned: dreams. Freud called them the Royal Road to the unconscious. We need to make that road a transport highway. We don't want occasional access. We want to bring great loads of freight out on it. We have to pave, broaden, and straighten it, to remove all the toll booths and state cops between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Most writers know about keeping a notebook by the bed, or even better, a cassette recorder. In those moments when the critic is not fully awake yet, make a few notes. You don't need to be detailed. Your memory will give you back your dreams once it has a clue. As I say, we all know it. But how many of us make a habit of it? Remember, we're looking not for occasional, but almost continuous access.

TRAIN IT

Second, we want to PRAISE the unconscious. When you've fetched an idea back, either through dreams or some other method, treat it like a child, or an animal you want to train. Give it a pat on the back, or a reward. Never let your critic say NO to what your unconscious tells you. If it gives you a dream, never think or say, "What good is this? It doesn't make SENSE." Hey. We're looking for diamonds, right? A lot of useless rock is going to come up the shaft with them. It's our job to filter, rearrange, interpret, cut and polish them so they DO make sense -- to our readers. So we're never going to say NO to the unconscious. We may not consciously understand what it gives us, at least not right away. We may not ever find a use for it. But we will never DENY it.

MYTHOLOGY

A third technique of access is to read deeply in the myths, and perhaps a little in early psychotherapy as well. Carl Jung; "The typical motifs in dreams . . . permit a comparison with the motifs of mythology. Many of those mythological motifs . . . are also found in dreams, often with precisely the same significance . . . The comparison of typical dream motifs with those of mythology suggests the idea -- already put forward by Nietzsche -- that dream-thinking should be regarded as a phylogenetically older mode of thought. Just as the body bears the traces of its phylogenetic development, so also does the human mind. Hence there is nothing surprising about the possibility that the figurative language of dreams is a survival from an archaic mode of thought."

Myths present a rising of the unconscious to the conscious under the guise of story. Children's stories, the great myths of the race, of ancient religions -- these are powerful evocations of the unconscious. If we become familiar with them, we can use them in our own work too. We can penetrate at once to the soul of the story. It skills us in interpretation; and with skill in interpretation comes the ability to build anew.

DRUGS

Another road to the unconscious is drugs, including alcohol. Coleridge springs to mind. Supposedly he wrote down the first part of "Kubla Khan" after awakening from an opium dream, then forgot the rest when he was interrupted by a visitor from Porlock. Many other artists have become more creative, or said they did, under various chemical influences. Jack London talks about this road in his little-known memoir John Barleycorn: "My brain was illuminated by the clear white light of alcohol. John Barleycorn was on a truth- telling rampage, giving away the choicest secrets on himself. And I was his spokesman . . . I was a lord of thought, the master of my vocabulary and of the totality of my experience, unerringly capable of selecting my data and building my exposition. For so John Barleycorn tricks and lures, setting the maggots of intelligence gnawing, whispering his fatal intuitions of truth, flinging purple passages into the monotony of one's days."

One day there may be a drug that gives us free access to the unconscious. Think of what that could mean! Instead of years of psychotherapy to reach the causes of neurosis, poor self-esteem, violence, megalomania -- we could take a pill. Artists could have access for hours to their unconscious in the waking state.

But today's drugs have too many side effects. They work only occasionally, they're addictive and toxic, and they end by destroying the ability to work at all. It happened to London. Again, John Barleycorn: "Resolutely I would refrain from drinking until my work was done. But a new and most diabolical complication arose. The work refused to be done without drinking. It just couldn't be done. I had to have a drink in order to do it. I was beginning to fight now. I had the craving and it was mastering me. I would sit at my desk and dally with pen and pad, but words refused to flow. My brain could not think the proper thoughts because it was obsessed with the one thought that across the room in the liquor cabinet stood John Barleycorn."

Five years after he wrote this, before one dawn in November, 1916, Jack London injected himself with a mixture of morphine and other drugs. He died the next day. He was only forty years old.

MAKE CLEAR IT'S SERIOUS

A fifth way to enhance your access to the creative portion of your mind is to make it very clear that you're dependent on it for food. When I was a freelance writer it was hammered into my unconscious that if IT didn't have story ideas, WE wouldn't eat. Today, after fifteen years in the business, I think my unconscious and I have a good partnership. I'm dependent on it, and it's dependent on me. If we don't work together, we don't get mortgage money. So we function as a team. How can you motivate a lazy subconscious? You might want to quit your job. You might want to really put the pressure on. If you have a good relationship with it, it will come through for you. But if there's no necessity for it to produce, why should it?

SEEKING THE CREATIVE TRANCE

Technique Number Six. A University of Chicago psychology professor named Mihaly Chic*sent*mi*hal*yi (sp. Csikszentmihalyi) has recently published a nonfiction book called Flow. It explores the phenomenon that athletes call the "zone," moments when we forget everything but what we are engaged in, including ourselves. Moments when "action follows action seamlessly" and results come to us without effort, as if from some outside force. His research shows that flow produces superior performance, and moreover, points to ways we can learn to eliminate what he calls "flow blockers."

His "flow blockers" sound very much like my Critic. Most of my best work is done in a kind of creative trance. Scenes happen in front of me, and all I have to do is remember them, or write them down. Surprisingly, it doesn't always happen in front of the keyboard. It's not random, though. I've learned to prepare for it, expect it, and let it happen. Common elements in going into this trance state for me are a) being in an environment where I can't be distracted by other chores, b) being slightly bored, and c) having some repetitive, low- mental-involvement physical activity going on.

For me, the trance comes most often when I'm running. I run slowly, about an hour every other day. This, combined with the dream method, seems to be the way Leo Tolstoy worked at Yasnaya Polyana. He said of writing there, "The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or during the walk." Another unblocker for me is taking long driving trips. I get full novels dictated during the 11- hour drive up to see my folks in Pennsylvania. THE SHILOH PROJECT came to me that way in 1978. I was pulling over every ten miles and making notes, and when I got home I just sat down and wrote it out accordingly. After that I kept a cassette recorder in the car. Last month it produced a complete outline for WARM SPRINGS, and gave me, incidentally, about three-quarters of this address on the trip back.

Look for your own moments of flow, or trance. Have you ever had them? When did they occur? Notice them, duplicate the conditions, and with practice you can make them happen on schedule.

TRAVEL AND CHANGE

Paul Theroux said: "How do you know that something is worth writing about if you haven't seen anything else?" What he means, I think, is that exposing yourself to different environments makes you see your own in a different light. When I came back after living in Micronesia, I saw American culture differently. When I came back from a visit to the USSR, I saw capitalism and freedom differently. I imagine if we went to another planet we'd see terrestrial biology and ecology with new eyes. Similarly, seek out people who are different from you. You may have friends you're comfortable with. But just that comfort probably means you're not going to hear any new ideas from them. Seek out and interact with those who may make you uncomfortable, especially creative people. Believe it or not, it rubs off.

DOING DIFFERENT THINGS

Everything novel that we do makes new connections in our minds. When you get a chance to do something you've never done before, that you don't even think you'd "like," that's not the sort of thing "people like you" are supposed to do -- maybe you ought to think about doing it, simply BECAUSE it's so different.

Henry Miller says, cruelly but I think with a measure of truth: "The average man . . . is more frightened of alien ideas than of cold steel or flamethrowers. He has spent most of his life getting adjusted to a few simple ideas which were thrust on him by his elders or superiors." There's a wonderful anecdote about a friend of Voltaire's, who invited him to a notorious bordello in Paris. The philosopher gave so good an account of himself that the next week his friend proposed they go back. Voltaire refused with his well-known smile. "Ah, no," he said. "Once, a philosopher; twice, a pervert." Not only will wider experience spur creativity, it'll also give you a wider range of backgrounds, metaphors, settings, and characters on which to draw. There's even a third benefit: That wider range can give your fiction the illusion of omniscience that is the hallmark of the accomplished writer. My favorite modern poet, Allen Ginsberg, says "There should be no distinction between what we write down and what we really know." The more we know, the wider the world our characters can believably inhabit.

PLAYING

Let's move on to technique number ten. Many writers have left behind themselves reputations as being childish, or childlike, to the extent of involving themselves in dream-states indistinguishable from what in children we call play. Johann Goethe, the German poet and dramatist, made all the scenery for the puppet theatre he gave to his son August for Christmas in 1800. George Sand, the French novelist, designed all the costumes for her puppet theater at Chateau Hohant and gave 120 puppet plays there. Cervantes, Anatole France, G.K. Chesterton, Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson were all avid toy collectors. H.G. Wells wrote books about playing with toy soldiers. And we must not neglect the Bronte sisters, whose make-believe characters as children grew seamlessly into the mature characters of their fiction.

It's not hard to see the resemblance between the child, playing with Barbie, GI Joe, or Michelangelo and Raphael -- inventing conversations, villains, scenes, threats, and denouements -- and the adult writer. In fact the resemblance is embarrassing. Because that's just what we do, when we write. We're inventing play-lives, building play-houses and play-people and play-worlds, for our readers to imagine and enjoy. Play is less serious than work. It's less stressful, and more fun. Is it too much to suggest that we can coax the Muse from her Olympian lair by setting out pretty toys? Is it too much to suggest that you borrow Barbie and Joe, lock the door to your office, sit them down together and -- who knows? Perhaps playing can unlock those gates of the imagination again.

BRAINSTORMING

A technique that works well on plotting, though not on other areas of the writing process, is to get several people together and start batting ideas around. This is also called collaborating, or clustering. It's such a fruitful technique that for a while it was even used by industry. Brainstorming works for me. THE CIRCLE began while I was helping a Navy friend replace the roof of his house. Thirty feet above the ground, with the smell of hot tar around us, we tossed ideas back and forth and came up with the plot . Another friend and I shaped up what came to be THE DEAD OF WINTER in a long hike through the autumn woods. Most recently, I was shooting the bull with two chiefs aboard USS ANTRIM, in Mayport. Inside of half an hour we had a complete outline for a book called MURDER ON THE USS MISSOURI.

CULTIVATE SUPERSTITION

It is said that Haydn had a diamond ring given him by Frederick the Great. If he did not have this ring on when he sat down to the piano, he could neither compose nor play. The unconscious thinks in childlike forms. To ensnare it, to tempt it into our office, there are harmless, though illogical, things we can do to make it feel welcome. Marcel Proust needed silence so much he built a room lined with cork. Edna Ferber liked to look out on the brick wall of a cold- storage warehouse. Mozart had to have his wife read fairy tales to him before he could compose. Gogol knitted as he dictated. Balzac had to wear a monk's robe when he sat down to write.

We could go on and on, but I think the point is clear. The last technique, number twelve, is to encourage your neuroses. Cultivate your superstitions. As long as it's harmless, indulge your Muse.

FORM A HABIT

Somerset Maugham said: "Imagination grows by exercise and, contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young." Now: how can we turn the access these techniques give us, into habits? And what will happen to us as we do?

As John Dewey points out in Human Nature and Conduct, it's a common error to assume that one changes a habit by telling oneself to change. He gives the example of a man with bad posture. In fact, Dewey says, a man who CAN stand properly will do so, and only a man who can, does. A man who does not stand properly forms a habit of standing improperly. "Conditions have been formed for producing a bad result, and the bad result with occur as long as those conditions exist."

Likewise, I suspect that the reason some people "never have any ideas" is that they've trained themselves to deny or ridicule new ideas when they appear. Eventually, they just stop coming. Dewey further points out that in order to make a habit of standing properly, one must be able to know what it feels like; must have been able to stand properly at least once. So if you've never had a new idea, and you don't dream, it's going to be a tough job to get regular access to your unconscious.

But that has to be true of very few people. Most of us, I think, have simply formed a habit of overexercising the critical faculty, and undervaluing the creative. To some extent this is societally mandated. Although all children are creative, few adults are empowered to step outside the narrow boundaries of conformism. Just try suggesting a different way to do things in most offices, factories, libraries, churches, or schools!

I don't think this is a flaw peculiar to American society. In fact, ours is the most open to innovation that's ever existed. But the fact remains that most of us have internalized far more of the Critic than is good for us as artists. John Gardner said, "Some writers really want to learn how to write correctly. That means they're going to write exactly like everybody else. There's another kind of writer that may be worse -- sometimes is -- but who's absolutely stubborn about what he's gonna do."

Far too many would-be writers choose one of two ways of avoiding the necessity to be creative. The first is to slavishly imitate previously successful forms. The second is to lapse into saccharine sweetness, to write overly formal prose in praise of the good, the beautiful, or the cute. Occasionally these may achieve publication, but ultimately they're sterile. They're just like cheating on a test. Truly creative people don't see the world through anyone's eyes but their own. They tend to be adventurous, to suspect authority, to identify if not experiment with many different kinds of lifestyles. They choose freedom over security. And, occasionally, they have been known to do suicidal, weird, unpopular, and immoral things. This is probably responsible for the common equation of the artist with the criminal, the bohemian, and the outlaw.

As you open yourself to the unconscious in your writing, it may be wise to prepare for consequences in your life as well. Creative thinking may lead you into conflict with your boss, your family, your religion, and your own concepts of what kind of person you are. Are you willing to take these risks? On the other hand, is the "safe" life you're settling for now really worth the sacrifices you're making to hold it fast? Seen another way -- are you really like the normal, average, perfectly worthwhile, but basically uncreative people you're trying to conform with? If you're not, isn't trying to look and act like them a kind of lie? And if you are -- then why do you think you want to be a writer? Isn't that a kind of lie too -- the worst kind -- a lie to yourself?

I've spoken a good deal now about creativity. Now let's talk about that other half of the brain, the "Apollonian" half, as Nietzsche called it, that works in counterpoint to the Creative. Oscar Wilde thought the critic was the more important of the two. He said: "The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates."

This critical process is responsible for the agony that is commonly thought of as accompanying writing. The act of creation itself is usually described in terms of access to secrets, as contact with a deeper ground of being; in short, of privilege and honor. Yet writing is also described as sweating blood, cutting a vein -- as a trial by ordeal through which we must pass to win the grail of completed art. John Dos Passos was perhaps describing this task when he said: "If there is a special hell for writers, it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works."

The best advice I can give is to approach it as an editor would approach someone else's work. With time, you can learn to enjoy rewriting too. It's like an immense, months-long crossword puzzle. And interestingly enough, in one of those inversions that occur in both art and psychology, at times the creative reveals to us as we sweat over the right word or the intricacies of plot or dialogue some metaphor or insight to a deeper level of meaning that completes the picture with sparkling rightness.

THE CREATIVE/CRITICAL ALTERNATION

Andre Gide: "Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason."

Now let's talk about the make or break point for the writer: the dialectic, or alternation, during the writing process, of the creative and the critical selves. I find this alternation one of the most fruitful metaphors I've happened on in talking to beginning writers. That's because beginning writers often freeze up. The reason they freeze is, they're trying to be critical and creative at the same time.

Maybe this happens to some of you. You write a line -- that comes from the creative aspect -- but at the same time you're criticizing it. You're jerked back instantly into awareness of how far short your attempt falls compared to the glowing ideal in the mind. What we have to learn is to separate the two processes. And it's a learned skill, like skating or reading Greek, not a sudden insight. We have to think of ourselves, quite consciously, as two people. One of these persons creates. He doesn't criticize at all. The other is the critic. He doesn't create at all. You have to teach yourself to separate these two personae in time. So when you create, you don't criticize yourself. That's so important I'll repeat it: When you create, don't criticize yourself.

The first word processor I learned to use, in 1978, was a TRS-80 based monstrosity called Lazy Writer. By today's standards it was slow, awkward, and not at all user-friendly. But it had an interesting feature. It operated in two modes. The first was for initial writing. When it was time to rewrite, you hit a button and all the key commands changed to a second mode, which you used to edit. You literally couldn't change things in the creative mode; and you couldn't create new things in the editing mode. There was an electronic wall between the Creator and the Critic.

You have to build a wall like this in your head. Nietzsche was discussing exactly the same process, but on a much higher level, when he said, "Only so much of the Dionysian ground of existence can enter into the consciousness of an individual as can be controlled by his Apollonian power of transfiguration. These two prime principles of art consequently unfold their powers reciprocally, according to a law of eternal balance." Kate Braverman, the author of Lithium for Medea, sounds like she has this process down. "Just keep writing scenes and clip them together," she says. "Keep going to points of energy. Don't panic. . . . Don't criticize as you go along. Always finish the failure -- you'll never know when there's going to be a mutation. Something may generate spontaneously. There's nothing glamorous about entering into hand-to-hand combat with the psyche . . . about spending time alone with . . . the phone off the hook. It requires a sacrifice of all the things that make you secure. Writing is inexplicable and unpredictable. When everything's said and done, it -- art -- must choose you."

Well, I set out in this discussion to talk about ideas, and where they come from. We've talked about various writers and how they conceived of, and related to, the creative process. I tried to share with you some of the places I find ideas, and how I try to clear their road to me. On the way, I tried to rattle some of the foundation bolts that may be holding your creativity down. Finally, I warned you about what may happen along the path of self-transformation that leads you toward a more creative relationship with your unconscious.

I hope no one wilfully misunderstands my advice. I'm not advocating selfish, immoral, or irresponsible behavior. I'm asking only that you cease so automatically characterizing things and people AS immoral or irresponsible; that you stop saying "NO" like a two-year-old; that you open windows to your spirit that may have been closed too long; that if what you're doing now doesn't work, perhaps you should try something new.

If I can leave you with only one thought, let it be this. It's not that seeing the world through new eyes is easy, or fun, or even rewarding. I'm going to tell you it's your duty.

I believe that truth, like good custard, exists only in individual servings. It's really best if we make it ourselves. Homemade, by one other individual, that's the next best thing. But being served a homogenized, pablumized "truth" mass-produced by corporations and governments -- that's only a little short of a lie.

If we are individuals with a moral sense -- if, sinners or saints, we yearn for the good, and hate evil, especially when we find it within ourselves -- then all our lives will be spent in the search for insight. When we discover some, I think it's our duty to share it. I need, we all need -- desperately -- that irreplaceable recipe that only you, and you, and you can bring with you to the feast.

Don't let us go hungry. 

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David Poyer is possibly the best known writer of American sea fiction alive today.  His most recent book is THAT ANVIL OF OUR SOULS (Simon & Schuster, July 2005).  Check out his work and career advice at the Home Page location below.
   

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