This short piece was originally published on my blog in two pieces. You can view them
here and here.
Tell Them to Ask the Rain
My Answer
If there’s one question every famous author is asked ad nauseam, it is “Where do you get your ideas?” Since I am not yet famous, and none of my ideas has gripped the minds of my generation and turned me into a bestselling novelist—again, yet—perhaps I shouldn’t even be tackling this question. So I will quote Jonathan Strange:
Tree speaks to stone; stone speaks to water. It is not so hard as we have supposed. Tell them to read what is written in the sky. Tell them to ask the rain!
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, p 667 (American hardcover ed.)
Of course, he was describing how to do magic, but his words are applicable here: everything is the germ of an idea. It is not so hard as we have supposed! There is not a second, not a moment, when the world around us is not rewriting itself into a hundred books, a thousand essays, a million stories; ideas that are there for us if we only look, if we only ask the rain.
A Brief Aside
Oscar Wilde would like to interject briefly:
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
The Art of Lying, 1899
That’s kind of what I’m trying to say; if you always see the world as it is and never think of the possibilities, you will never be a writer of fiction, or any kind of artist. And Oscar Wilde will think you are a boring person, a fate too hideous to imagine. Quick! Think an original thought!
Conclusion?
I honestly wonder what it would be like not to have a brain that is constantly teeming with scenes and plots and dialogue and intrigue, but I don’t suppose I would like it if I were to experience it. In the end, my answer is no more satisfying than any other, in that it is no answer at all.
Sean
