When I wake up in the morning I try to make myself idea hungry. I tell myself to watch. Idea hungry means that all around you there’s something that’s happening. In my external world there’s interesting things happening. Being here in this chair with Don, being here is an interesting — it’s something that’s an idea. So later on I’ll write it down on a little piece of paper. It could be a napkin. I usually travel with a notebook, a little tiny notebook and a little tiny sketchbook.
So at the end of the day — well I also pay attention to what’s going on internally because it’s not all just external. It’s also internal, internal meaning whatever it is that makes me feel something like happy or sad or interested, I know that those are seeds for ideas or seeds for stories and so I’ll just take a quick note, you know? I won’t write a long journal about it but I’ll take a quick note.
And then when I get home I tear out my little notes and my drawings and I throw them in the idea box.
And then how does the idea box work?
Okay, well first of all, it’s really important for you to know that these are not full grown, blown stories. They’re just bits and pieces of information and so what I do, I believe in playing, playing, you know, just letting my imagination run so I’ll take out all these pieces of paper. I like to work — I don’t have a desk. I work in a bed. I love to lie down in a bed with my feet up and just put all the little pieces of paper around me and I have my little things, you know?
Usually there’s a dog at the end or a bird. You know, I have little friends that are with me and then I just relax and I just forget about what I’m picking up. I’ll look at it and there will be something on there like the napping house. That was — I wrote that down one time because it was what I called my mother’s house when I took our son over to take a nap there so I had just thrown that in.
You know, that is interesting. I’m going to keep that and so I’ll be cross referencing all these things and I’m not saying that right then and there a story comes up but what it does, it shows me what interests me and I begin the think and contemplate that, you know? And then as the days go by and the weeks and the months and the years, you know, the stories come. They come.
And I do suggest that children do this because, you know, there’s so much structure. You’ve got to do your grammar correctly and you have to be able to spell and by the way, write a story and so I’m always telling children forget about the spelling and grammar right now. Just get the story down first and you can come back and — that’s where your teachers really help you, you know, to help you get to the mechanics of writing.