Random Bits of Fluff

All right, writing about random bits of fluff may seem pretty random, but inspiration can be pretty random. Songs and stories and poems don’t usually come out of nowhere. They come out of the random bits of stuff that our brains grab hold of out of our everyday lives. I call it fluff, because it just sort of drifts in and out of consciousness like dandelion fluff, and now and again it takes root and then won’t go away. This happens to everyone, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s as bad as having the “Ballad of Sharknado” stuck in your head, and sometimes it’s just the recurring thought that foxes are the color of autumn leaves.

That’s all well and good, of course, but how does this help us? What if I forget what I was thinking of? What if the idea just vanishes? And how do I use these bits of fluff anyway? Well, there’s no one right way of using it. There’s no one right way to write a song, a poem. There’s no one single right way to create. So the very first thing is to understand that. The first thing is knowing that, if one way of doing things doesn’t work for you, there are other ways.

Me, I write lists.

I mean, I do other things too, but I write lists. Lists like:

• pitter-patter of hopping frogs
• fox-color = fall leaves
• dust curling like a kitten
• chocolate
• wind dancing
• thunderstorms
• flashlight tag
• walking barefoot through dewy grass.

I keep these in notebooks – physical and virtual – and read them over now and again, whenever I feel in need of inspiration. And sometimes I lose these notebooks, and then find them months to years later. Sometimes that is even better, because then I am reading these words and phrases with fresh eyes and without the anticipation of what those words were attached to.

So, sometimes inspiration comes out of a single word on lists like these, and sometimes inspiration comes out of a group of them. Sometimes inspiration doesn’t come at all, and that’s okay too. Sometimes ideas need to percolate a while, and having lists like this can help to re-start the creative process.

Or at least they can confuse the heck out of your family and friends.