Diary of a Mad Editor

Hey, I’ve Got an Idea

So, the other night, I was at a poetry reading. While I was waiting for the poetry reading to begin, I picked-up the latest issue of Inferno. For those of you unfamiliar with Inferno (and I suspect most of you reading this blog are not familiar with it), it is a bi-monthly arts newspaper. It’s a regional paper distributed for free at various locations on the East Coast. Anyway, I was reading Renee Rasinger’s latest “Conjuring Creativity” column — the first of a 2-parter about “generating ideas.”

According to Renee:

“There’s no one way to get ideas, only what works for you. . . . That said, there may be several methods that do work for you when it comes to generating ideas.”

Can you say, “No duh?”

Seriously, read that quotation a few times and see if you don’t start to get a sharp pain shooting out of your eye sockets.

Renee is a self-proclaimed “creativity coach.” Her only claim to that title is that she took some online seminar under the guidance of creativity guru, Eric Maisel whom she cribs from quite liberally in her articles.

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you are probably aware of the fact that I put very little stock in creativity coaching. Although, I do think there is value in creative advocacy in certain limited circumstances. For instance, being a former cancer patient, myself, I can tell you that some of these people do wonderful work in the cancer community. But most are scam artists. I would definitely place Renee in that latter category. If you are so desperate that you need to be coached by someone like Renee, you are definitely drifting down shit creek without a paddle or a prayer.

If you are reading this blog, you are most likely involved in the creative arts in one capacity or another — so you know it’s true: Generating ideas is just about the easiest part of what we do. It’s developing those ideas into something worthwhile that’s the hard part.

Here’s just a few ideas off the top of my head:

- Man passes out drunk and wakes up missing an arm.

- Woman falls in love with the brother of her unborn baby’s father driving cross country to her own wedding.

- A young preacher stands on the ledge of a tall building reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Hell, I could go on like that all day. But, again, that’s the easy part.

And there’s no method to it at all. Turning off that spigot is much harder than turning it on. It’s called having an imagination. Maybe try using it once in a while.

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