Idea Generator
May 16, 2018

A few weeks ago, I came home from a trip to the bookstore with an armload of new
books. I laid them out on the carpet to enjoy the sight and feel of them, and
the three across in the top row were a volume about invisible inks, one about
the Italian Futurists, and a collection of Edmund Morris' essays. I picked up
the one about invisible inks first and flipped through it. Then I did the same
with the one about the Futurists. As I was setting the second book down, I
wondered idly what the Futurists would have done with invisible inks. Poetry
with hidden words? Clothing that changed color based on temperature or when
splashed with the proper reagent? No matter what they did, they probably would
have had all sorts of absurd fun with the concept. Picking up the third book, I
wondered what sort of essay Edmund Morris might have written about the Italian
Futurists and their crazy, color-changing clothes. 

It was only later that I realized I'd stumbled upon an idea generator of sorts;
that the juxtaposition of these disparate volumes had caused my mind to look
create unexpected and un-looked-for links and connections between seemingly
unrelated ideas.

I haven't yet tried the exercise a second time. However, if you feel you're
stuck for ideas for a story, you're welcome to try pulling three random books
off your bookshelf and to dip in and out of each one until the ideas begin to
flow.

 To change topics entirely -- Well, that was embarrassing. In a fit of
end-of-grad-school fatigue, I mis-dated my last two April posts as belonging to
March. The dates have been corrected.

(c) 2018 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com