Sometimes ideas are like mosquitos – whispers that won’t leave you alone. Sometimes they are slippery and hard to grasp. Sometimes they’re chaotic, tumbling over each other. Sometimes they are lurking in the shadows, maddeningly half revealed and sometimes they are frightening – too big to hold.
Whether they are big or little, scary, silly, sad, strange, embarrassing or brilliant they are in unlimited supply. You can’t run out.
And this is also true:
“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”
Linus Pauling
Lots.
And I would add this – have lots of ideas and write them down, record them, scribble them, sketch them – as soon as they show up.
Volume matters not because you’re bound to get lucky eventually but because asking your brain to generate lots of ideas keeps the wheels turning and the machinery well oiled. It makes you ask the second question and the third and the fourth etc. etc. that will lead you to new places, lead you deeper into your imagination and your magic.
Yes! Exactly. This reminds me that I have to start keeping a sketchbook/journal with me at all times.
Hi Ann,
I love reading your blog and have learned so much from you. I particularly like reading about your Big Creative Year. I have nominated you for the Blogger Recognition Award. You can read about it here https://jotterizing.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/hats-off-to/
Aiming to make some nice mice soon, thanks for the pattern!
Vita
Thanks for this. I am not much for goals or dreams – in my case they only seem to lead me to disappointment. But ideas! Oh I have lots of those. And I agree it’s a great way to keep the mind busy, free from boredom – I could never get bored or run out of things to do, just the time to do it all in. (Which I guess relates to your later post about whether you should necessarily do all that you can.)
The comment that you made about recreational ironing was music to my ears. I worked with teenagers and young adults and very few of them evened owned an iron, nor could they read a note written in cursive writing , or tell time from a clock that wasn’t digital. I have loved to iron since the day my Granny had me ironing her hand embroidered pillow slips and hankies. For the last two days I have been ironing and admiring my collection of tatting and hand made linens made by women of past times often by candle light for pennies to ward of starvation in Scotland and other places…………keep on ironing!! Cheers Linda Danielson (Vancouver Island in Canada)