Percolating and Brainstorming: by Devi Laskar

Sometimes you just have to think and think and think, and daydream and daydream and daydream. And wonder and make mental lists and cross off items from the mental list and then read, read, and read more. All this flurry of thought on a single seed of an idea. This is called percolating.

And one day, it becomes necessary and brilliant to write down these thoughts and these lists, and make note of what you’ve read and what you’ve heard and make “visual” contact with your thought. This is called brainstorming.

For example, I had an idea for a poem in July 2008. But it took three years and nine months of thinking and wondering as well as a visit to both the Rodin Sculpture Garden in Palo Alto, Ca. and the High Museum in Atlanta, for the rather long thought to finally to settle down and allow itself to be moored on to a page.

In a recent mentoring class in the Book Writing World, Elizabeth had us make “concept maps” where we put a central idea or character in a circle in the middle of a blank page and place related ideas or characters or moments in circles nearby and then connect them with dotted lines. We have made lists, we have doodled as well.

Here is another suggestion to help with brainstorming: take two books that you really loved, and that you’re overly familiar with. Write down a three act summary of what happens in each book. That’s 1-2 sentences for the books beginning, middle and end. Then do the three act summary, substituting your content in place of the two you just completed.

Once you have had time to think and then put something in writing, you’ll gain a clearer “picture” of what you’ll need to do next to bring your story or your poem to fruition.

What books are you going to use as your muse or models? and how are you going to borrow from them to strengthen your own work?

Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan and is working on a novel.