The idea farm is a creation – where we keep all of our ideas planted, waiting for the spring.
PLANT:
There’s a time for the planting – every day, every minute, every conversation, every silence. But pick and choose. My favorite place to get ideas is from overheard snippets of conversations, words and lines heard in passing or overheard in a coffee shop. Sometimes, it’s just a word someone throws out that sticks. It might be an image. Someone posted a photo and it was eerie, strangely haunting to my strange little perception. I have notebooks, torn papers, lists of ideas. And the ideas do come to live when they’re ready.
FERTILIZE:
To keep the idea farm going, we need to keep it fresh. New ideas coming, water flowing, fertilizer tossed around. Water is connected, according to Freud, to our unconscious. Taking a bath before bed is a great way to feed your muse. Fertilize – remember to go back, reread, add a word or two, subtract a word or two, think about it before you go to bed, when you first wake up. Something will bloom. Sometimes it blooms prematurely and I’m up at 3am writing like a madwoman. But it works. I wrote a number of poems and short stories struck by a fever of words and rhythm. Of Strays and Exes and The Gold Tooth were written under one of those spells.
HARVEST:
When the time is right, you write. You’ll pluck that idea out of the ground and start massaging it into what it was meant to be. Eddy was on a list. It sat there for quite some time waiting for me to be brave enough to pull it out, confident enough to put the words to paper, and strong enough to show it to others. So many more stories came like that – waiting for just the right time, ripe from the time and the fertilizer and ready to burst forth.
Much love and luck.
els like we’ve reached the point of all those 80’s sci-fi movies in which people stay inside, afraid to go out, and resist human contact.
“no where to sit, no where to stand, hey there’s a table, this table is ours..” followed be hard looks and threatening body language by anyone from people who look like they would murder us for the chair or even the blue hair squad.
I found myself surrounded by strangers talking about art. They were all from a local art school and I enjoyed their interpretations and expertise.
I’ve always chuckled at those dating profiles that read: No baggage.
and control of our emotional center, these things need to be sussed out. We need to realize when we get upset with the cashier for not giving us the correct change, it’s not the mistake we’re upset with. It’s something deep down inside that we feel someone wronged us, cheated us, was unfair with us. We take it out on the cashier, but the poor underpaid soul most likely made an error and the feelings we are feeling are from something deeper.
In being more authentic, I want to be more open with readers. This story is something I’ve been working on – off and on – for years.
With its shrugging shoulder beginning, it’s very vowely middle and then an ld. Say ld aloud. You make that face like Lucy tasting something terrible, or receiving bad news, or stepping in a should.
Noreen Lace 
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