“The Universe is Lobbing Creative Inspiration at Us All The Time. Don’t Be a Sucker and Miss Those Free Ideas. You Gotta Write that Stuff Down!”
There are so many people who write about writing. By the mere fact I’m writing this blog post, I suppose makes me one of them. What I’m really talking about are experts -- folks who’ve made fortunes and become household names for their written words: Anne LaMott, Steven King, that ilk. I’ve read many a blog on How to be a Writer.
Once, I even signed up for David Sedaris’ Master Class, the eponymously and unhilariously named, “David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling and Humor.” There, on a warmly-lit TV set with a diffused background and wearing super cool socks, David held forth his observations about observational writing.
David Sedaris Seen Sockless
Observational writing seems far easier than the world building and character development required for fiction writing. With observational writing, it seems you just have to open your eyes and tune your ears to the world around you and a story will land itself in your lap faster than a mis-speared meatball sliding of a plate of sauce. According to The Experts™, the universe is forever lobbing ideas at us. Rather than doing a duck and cover from all these creative projectiles hurtling at you through time and space, evidently, you are supposed to catch them in the idea net that is your attention span. These creative grenades become the juicy ingredients for Your Great Masterwork™ -- that thing on your agenda right after cleaning out the garage and trimming your cat’s nails. And Monster -- you tell everybody who asks why you’re not writing -- is a polydactyl cat with six nails each foot so it’s a whole THING. For extra measure, you remind these questioners of your schedule that Hemingway was a great lover of polydactyls which puts you in the same class as Hemingway. So there.
Another thing Sedaris insisted: you MUST carry a notepad with you at all times. You simply can not rely on your memory (after two glasses of prosecco) to retain the unintentionally funny thing the woman at the next table is saying in a Very Loud Voice™ about her vagina. You think you have it locked in your noggin -- that’s how hilariously unforgettable it is -- but as soon as you get home (after that third prosecco), and after feeding Monster, and reading your mail, you sit down at your computer only to realize your brain has transposed the word vagina into the word gall bladder, and suddenly the story just isn’t all the funny anymore. There was something absurd and satirical about that lady’s tale but it’s gone now. All because you didn’t have a notepad. Sucker.
Formerly Lost Notepad, Now Resting Comfortably at Home
Apparently, what you are supposed to do while eavesdropping and hearing the best turn of phrase ever, is to write the thing down. A word about the ethics of this for the former middle school hall monitors among you: if it was said out loud, it’s in the universe, and therefore belongs to everyone -- every writer that is -- for the plucking.
One important caveat if you choose observational writing as your path: don’t be too obvious about the note-taking thing. It could be considered déclassé. More déclassé than tossing random French words around, bon mot if you will, in a pathetic effort to come off more educated than you are.
There’s a time and place for universal eavesdropping. Par example: you’re at a funeral and you overhear something hilarious during a eulogy -- busting out a notepad and taking notes in such a situation would be a deadly faux pas. What you can do is suddenly excuse yourself, run off to a bathroom, lock yourself in a stall, and scribble away before you forget it. No one ever questions a person clutching their stomach and screaming: “Gangway, coming through.” Never. Not even at a funeral. Especially at a funeral.
Given the experts seem unified on this idea of a notepad, years ago I started carrying one around. I figured I’d fill it up with snippets of overheard conversation, or maybe an inspired idea that just magically popped in my head. You don’t question the universe when it chooses you as a conduit, you just scribble the damn stuff down.
I carried this notepad in my purse for months, and there were long stretches when I didn’t feel the need to take it out. The universe hadn’t been tossing anything my way. Maybe its GPS was glitchy or it was having a dry spell. It happens to the best of us.
On a few occasions, when my purse felt a little too cramped, I’d toss The Notebook of Big Ideas™ into the back seat of my car…temporarily, of course. At some point though, and I have no recollection of when this was, I must have put the notepad in the back seat and never retrieved it. With my driving skills being what they are, the notepad slid under the driver’s seat and there it stayed for probably a year or longer. I didn’t miss it and didn’t go on a search for it because I simply forgot it existed.
Doing a deep clean of my car interior recently, I found the notepad under the seat. “Holy cow,” I cried out, “this thing!” I was so overjoyed, huzzah! I hugged it to my chest, as though I’d found a long-lost friend. I wept for being reunited with the treasured heirloom I thought was gone forever. Admittedly, this was a weird, over-the-top reaction because I really had forgotten I had even started the thing. Still, I had to revel in the possibilities. The universe led me to this discovery, there are no accidents. This unearthed time capsule dropped back into my lap for a reason. It felt like a gift from the gods that, surely, contained the secret sauce to stir me from my current writing slump. What ifit held literary gold? Wordsmithing myrhh? Writerly frankinsense?What, indeed, if? Oh, the possibilities!
Tasting genius and no longer able to contain my curiosity, I cracked the Notepad of Big Ideas open. A wisp of dust escaped. My eyes teared up. My breath caught in my throat. From the dust, not from emotion or anything. There, on the first line of the first page, were the following words:
A fart that’s a hate crime.
And under that:
Walmart Fabio.
That was it. Zut alors!
Nothing else was in the book: no embellishment, no context, no source. I don’t know if these were overheard in a restaurant or gym (read: something to plagiarize) or words that popped in my own skull organically while driving (the universe-lobbing idea machine thingy). Whatever the origin, my former self felt they were significant enough to memorialize. Aside from that: I had no memory.
Perfect.
So now what? How do I use these words? They were important to me at some point in my past so they can’t be just be forgotten, discarded, dismissed. They were thrown at me. By the universe. And that thing is big.
I know what I’ll do! I will write a blog post about them.
Voila!
