Like the faeries in The Spiderwick Chronicles, ideas are all around us, whether we can see them or not. Do you see the ones here? Do you?
I confess this question boggles my mind: I see ideas everywhere—when I look out the window, when I open a book, when I do the dishes, when I close my eyes to sleep—don’t you? My husband recently reminded me that no, not everyone does see ideas everywhere. I guess it’s a little like seeing faeries in The Spiderwick Chronicles. There, a seeing stone enables people to see the faeries. Is there a seeing stone for seeing ideas? I think there is.
Philip Pullman has a great answer for the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” He says,
I don’t know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.
Philip Pullman’s seeing stone is the act of sitting at his desk.
I think I have a whole collection of seeing stones: doing dishes, traveling in any vehicle, gardening, walking, picking blueberries. But I think there’s a sort of master seeing stone in my collection, one that fits all situations: silence.
I don’t spend my days in a bustling office or school. I don’t have radio or tv on in the background. My phone rarely rings, and I’ve yet to send or receive a text message. My days are pretty quiet—by design. I want them this way. I want and need to generate ideas, and this environment helps.
If you want generate more ideas, if you want to be more creative, try turning the radio and tv off, tune out hustle and bustle. Maybe silence will be your seeing stone, too, revealing the zillions of ideas that I assure you are all around and within you.
There’s a learning curve to using your seeing stone, but keep working at it: Once you start seeing ideas, more and more will appear. Ideas beget ideas.
I agree that ideas are everywhere, and that ideas beget ideas. One key, for me anyway, is to spend time with one idea rather than thinking it, then turning my attention to something else. I think that creativity may come from the pondering an idea–asking the “whys”, and “what-ifs”–and seeing where it leads you. TV and other media can be a distraction to that kind of thinking, or it can be the source of the ideas. And in some people, I think that “background noise” actually aids their ability to think creatively;don’t ask me how, because it doesn’t work for me, but I’ve seen it work with my kids. Also doing something physical, whether it be doodling or washing dishes seems to help some people think and process. This may boil down to the different intelligences (kinesthetic learners). I have heard of companies who actually hand out “squishy balls” for meetings to aid in people’s thinking/processing. Sounds a little like snake oil, but who knows?