"ideas ... like locusts"

Just in from meetings where the questions people have been asking me for the past two weeks surfaced again: How do you figure out what to write? Where do you find ideas?

It's a question Leonard Cohen touched on in an interview earlier this summer, and whose answer singer-songwriter Tom Russell picks up on in his own thoughts last week about contemporary storytelling. Cohen observes,

These times are very difficult to write in because the slogans are really jamming the airwaves - it's something that goes beyond what has been called political correctness. It's a kind of tyranny of posture. Those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts. And it's difficult for a writer to determine what he really thinks about things.

A writer's wanderings through the world invites encounters with a mess of ideas, which may indeed be as daunting as a swarm of locusts without some attitude that puts the swarm into perspective. "All is vanity," and "This too shall pass," are helpful, but tend to disengagement rather than in-depth discernment. What's needed are questions that challenge our daily experience in and of the world, the lens through which we can focus on what's important.

This is lofty-sounding, and I don't pretend to always focus on what's most important; sometimes the less-important things provide a welcome diversion from the weightier topics. And sometimes, as a writer, taking the less-discerning route is a way to pay the bills. But it's not a recipe for satisfaction in the long term. And so the lighter assignments have to be taken with intent, knowing that they're just one component in an overall portfolio of work one is always developing.

So, how to see clearly and avoid being overcome by the devouring locusts? A good book that renews the mind is a start. One book worth mentioning in this context is Frederick Busch, A Dangerous Profession (1999). It's a reminder for writers, regardless of genre, to keep pushing their own boundaries. To be dangerous, writing (to quote the old saw about journalism) should "afflict the comfortable" -- and that includes the writers drifting to disengagement, especially in an age when information on the screens constantly demanding our attention.