The Idea Tree
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- 7/1/2010 |
- 10:00 am
More than three hundred young faces stared down at me from the bleachers. I was on their turf, the echo chamber of a school gymnasium, finishing what had been an enthusiastic assembly on writing and creativity.
I knew the question was coming before the seventh-grader posed it. It's always the first question at my school presentations. As soon as I hear the first word - 'œwhere...'쳌 - I can practically finish the sentence for them: 'œ...do you get your ideas?'쳌
It's a question that has an almost magical quality in the mind of many middle school students, because it implies that there's some mist-covered, dream-like dimension to which writers venture in order to pluck shimmering, ripe thoughts from the mystical Idea Tree.
And, to be fair, I think some writers encourage this fantasy. They enjoy the aura that surrounds 'œthe artist,'쳌 one step removed from wizardry and the awe that accompanies it. It somehow endows them with a minor celebrity status: He Who Is Able To Conjure Insight From The Fabled Tree of Ideas.
It's a charade that damages students. Suggesting to young minds that harvesting ideas requires passage to a mystical netherworld places the concept of writing on a pedestal that automatically seems out of reach to the average student, and therefore not worth attempting.
If we want to foster writing in young people - which ultimately, by association, boosts reading - it's important to pull back the curtain which shields the fraud of the Great and Powerful Oz. Published authors have no more access to the Idea Tree than middle school students. The only difference is that your average 14-year-old is under the impression that they need training and permission to go there.
At many of my assemblies we bust out an interactive exercise where I give a handful of students four random words, along with a random short sentence. They get three minutes to quickly compose a short (one or two paragraph) story that utilizes the four words and the sentence. It's a common exercise, a form of mental calisthenics to limber up the mind, and the resulting stories are almost always quite entertaining.
But in that one brief moment, students suddenly realize that they're able to access the Tree. Sure, it took a prompt, but the prompt was almost a trick, a flimsy crutch that they really didn't even need. As the volunteers read their stories aloud, you can see the realization dawning in the eyes of their classmates: 'œI could do this.'쳌 Most have already composed a pseudo-plot in their own mind, taking the first step that all authors must take.
Ideas are not magical creatures. I'm convinced that your typical five-year-old is bursting with them. And yet over the next few years they're somehow conditioned to believe that story-telling is the domain of only a select few. They become passive listeners, and then lose interest altogether, lost in a sea of fellow spectators.
Peter Bregman, writing for the Harvard Business Review, suggested that boredom plays a part in the creative process. I completely concur, especially when Bregman states that boredom allows our minds 'œto wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that's where creativity arises.'쳌
At my school assemblies I understand that I'm speaking to a generation that has been over-stimulated to the max. Televisions that come on at six in the morning and stay on until midnight, non-stop texting and Twitter messages, Facebook exchanges, along with the ever-present earbud that streams endless music from dawn to dusk. It's a generation that rarely unplugs.
That means they're inundated with other people's ideas all day. There's no quiet reflection where their own ideas can ferment; they're too busy swimming in borrowed creativity to explore their own.
This is not a rant against electronic devices. I own plenty of them myself. But I unplug from the matrix and tap into my personal Idea Tree, too. I allow the creative juices in my mind to bubble up from the depths after being suppressed by a thick layer of noise. Somehow, without making it seem like punishment, we need to occasionally unplug the students in our sphere and allow them the chance to explore their individual ideas, rather than the group-speak they're accustomed to.
I looked up at the girl in the bleachers. She was leaning forward slightly, waiting to hear the secret from a published author, hoping to grasp the special code that would grant her access to the Emerald City of Writing. 'œI get my ideas from exactly the same place you do,'쳌 I said, tapping my temple. 'œYou have as many ideas as I do, and they're just as interesting - or more - as mine. Grab them, and twist them into the shapes you enjoy.'쳌
Her face said it all. I had torn away that mystical curtain and exposed the fraud. I'll bet anything that she went home and tapped out the first few lines of the story that's been drifting through her sub-conscious mind for weeks.
All she needed was a gentle reminder: The Emerald City was a dream.
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