The Daily Blog experiment – idea generation

The funny thing is, I can remember how I generated perhaps 20% of my poems, maybe 50% of my stories, and 90% of my articles.

The articles are easy. When I was a columnist for NOVA magazine, I’d get a list of the themes of the month way ahead of time, and then I’d have a two week lead time each month to offer up a new article.

Often, the theme would be something as vague as ‘light’, ‘foundations’, or ‘comfort’. As long I was 1000 words long, vaguely amusing, vaguely new age, and vaguely speaking to the theme, I could write what I liked. (As long as I didn’t get all meta and writing about writing.)

Sometimes, my initial thought was what went with. I’d been hot air ballooning the month before ‘light’ so I could write about the dawn light coming through the clouds.

Foundations though….my mum’s foundation garments of huge bra, Bonds Cottontail undies, and panti-girdle were not going to do the trick.

Sometimes it took some desperate intention setting and a trip to St Andrew’s bush market. “Between now, 8am, and when I get home, I will see something that inspires today’s article.”

I had to do some desperate intention setting that today I would generate an idea for the 5th module of Season of the Wolf: the Hulder and the search for extraterrestrial flora.

I haven’t done all the reading. I missed last week’s discussion of the reading. I’m currently in Queensland visiting my daughter and three grandkids. I haven’t turned my mind to the topic at hand.

I did take a half hour walk today, which usually lets my mind wander. It obligingly did so. A few days before, I saw a notification that Australian nature writer Inga Simpson was giving a writing workshop. I can’t attend, but thought of her brought her novels NEST, and WHERE THE TREES WERE. The latter got me thinking about arborglyphs – symbols carved into indigenous Australian trees. Most have been cut down and destroyed during land grabs by white fellas. Those preserved in museums have mysteriously gone missing in collections (let’s not admit that this land remains unceded).

Arborglyphs x Scandinavian huldra = today’s poem about immigration, hybridisation, integration, and in the background is land rights.

I can’t post any of it here, due to me wanting to sell first publication rights, but I thought you’d like to know about the cross-pollination that happens in my brain.

Oh go on then, here’s a Scribbly snippet.

Poem found on Terri Windling’s website

Phyllis Holliday said…
Bridges

More than once kind friends
Make bridges in the air – They are
Artists, writers, actors, muses,
They keep all the secret trolls
Alive and watchful and necessary.

These trolls I know are of course
Secretly kinder than we think.
Who else could hide under stones
On wet weeds and mud, to call out
“Who goes there?” Who indeed?

Artists, writers, actors, children and
Also jugglers; all on the edge of
The stories we cherish, for children
And any seeker on a quest; road
Stops and becomes the bridge.

Do you not in dreams, search
Among good and evil, and find
The something in between, Troll
Who puzzled you, and as trickster
Gives you riddles and tales.

In green country, with stone bridges
And fairy gifts are nearby, we see
Where we need to go. But first
Meet the Troll, Change into who
You never knew who you could be.

Brigid Sends a Poem

I’ve signed up to do an online writing course called MONSTROUS WOMEN, run by teacher and writer Carina Bissett.  I got so much (not the least of which was productivity) out of my previous class with her (Intersections) that I signed up again.

The past few days, I’ve been going through the reading matter for the first module, Animal Brides, and thinking of various settings and ways to tell an animal bride story.  Being an Aussie, I dearly wanted to include Australian fauna, and was thinking along the lines of a kangaroo-woman, or some such.

The course is mainly focussed on stories, but poetry is allowed as well.

I knew the first stories were due on the 7th of this month, only a few days away.  Now, last time I did a course with Carina, I went through a lot of angst, sure each time a new module dropped that this would be the time I couldn’t produce anything.  There was a lot of beating my brains, sweating, and a little crying.  But each time, admittedly sometimes at the last moment, a new story or poem came chugging out of me. So I have a little more faith in the machinations of my own creative mind this time around.

I woke this morning, and suddenly, there was a burning knowing in me that a poem was coming, and it was about selkies.  I was barely sat at my desk when the poem came pouring out.  Several references made it clear that the speaker was of Irish heritage (thanks, Brigid), and then the end surprised me with a reference to Australian oceanic fauna.

My daily devotions to Brigid have certainly paid off.  Plus, I think it’s a darned good poem, powerful.

Great Goddess Brigid, thankyou for the sending of this poem.  It rocked me to my core.

(I won’t be publishing it here.  Even a blog publication counts as ‘first publication’ and many professional journals won’t consider the story or poem then.  So, I’m saving this one for workshopping, and then sending it my favourite journals.  My goal: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  That’s my number one place, the heart’s desire.)