Often when I work on creative projects, I will drift (AKA procrastinate) and wonder where the inspiration comes from. How do we come up with stuff to draw upon? Naturally, I came up with it, but who or what planted the seed?

I think of it as a stew of ingredients, simmering in my brain.

Whenever I’m in a rut, that stew consists of tons of television, video games, and books. This is no good. I mean, it’s fine in its balanced amounts. They’re a good escape for me. I’m sure you have your favorite brand of escapes as well. I define them as those things that — even if they’re good for me — I can us as an excuse to get out of real work and real creativity.

Some of them are insidious. Like reading. I mean, what schoolteacher is going to tell a kid to stop reading so damned much? Books are wonderful and to read is such a pleasure. I often use them however, to avoid writing, avoid research, and keep myself in isolation.

Another bland stew is routine. Same old, same old. I live in a big city, but months can go by and I’ll have only interacted with the same forty or fifty things, seen the same twenty or thirty people, and gone to the same four or five places. Again — not a problem in of itself. Consistency is fantastic, and something I strive to achieve always.

However, if I haven’t drawn creatively from those people, places and things already, what makes me think I’m going to capture some characteristic or flaw in someone I’ve known for ten years?

Shout out to day jobs. For years, I worked in restaurants, and saw every walk of life. It was a fantastic source of creative material because I never knew who I was going to meet or what the shared moment with them would bring.

These days, it’s even better. I travel for work on occasion to remote areas of the country and get to meet people out of all my demographics: racial, economical, religious, and attitude. They’re people I wouldn’t ever counter in my day-to-day routine. I find them intriguing. It’s a rare road trip that I don’t fill a notebook with new observations.

It stirs the stew. It changes the work. For instance, a couple of years ago, I worked on a story about a cocky, recently fired auto executive who has to come crawling back home, a broke and broken failure. His father and idiot brother have taken the family business, a custom auto garage, and are trying to start a reality show sensation.

I had the bones of this story, but the characters were thin. The father, in particular, was nothing more than a mash-up of various tv actors and stereotypes. Craig T. Nelson, if he used to be in the Hell’s Angels, but loves his family like Tony Soprano—- that type of thing.

When I only draw from my old pal TV, it leads to dull, one-dimensional characters.

Luckily, I went on the road to Fresno. My earning job has me assess disaster loss, and in this particular case, a fire had destroyed a raisin farm.

The owner of the farm, Ray, was a tough old salt, and unlike anyone I had met. When I saw pre-fire pictures of his garage, and his Harley Davidson collection, I started to get that tingling feeling of synchronicity. This was my character, in the flesh. So I started to listen to him carefully and subtly ask personal questions.

Without his knowing it, I also watched his every detail. One day he invited me to lunch with his crew, a dozen farmhands. How could I say no? Actually, how I say no is when I’m in isolation. This is a state I crawl into often, but for the good of stirring the stew, I make myself leap outside my comfort zone.

We all walked to a tiny diner in an industrial park. The waitress greeted Ray and his guys, and I could tell they’d eaten there every day for the last… forever.

In the bustle of the lunch rush, the waitress hopped around and took all our orders. The guys all jawed with each other about their car repairs, fights they’d fought, new babies and grand-babies being born, and how to repair a motorcycle the right way, dammit.

What Ray did amidst the noise was fascinating. He had ordered a soup and salad. My wife says if I don’t clear out some of this cholesterol, she’s gonna start shopping for caskets, he told me. The rest of the guys ordered hot sandwiches. Ray’s soup and salad came out first — way first, like twenty minutes before the rest.

Ray didn’t call any attention to what he was about to do, but he didn’t realize he had let a little weasle-writer on the farm. I watched him closely…

Without a word, Ray took the saucer from his coffee cup, and placed it on top of his steaming soup. He then folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and simply listened to the guys chatter. A couple of the sandwiches landed, and the guys dove in. Ray continued on in silence with his crossed arms.

A couple more landed, and I realized what he was doing— he wasn’t going to take one bite or sip until every one of his guys had their food. Including me.

When the waitress put my sandwich in front of me, I decided I’d wait with Ray. He wasn’t having it. I cast one finger in my direction with a direct order: “Eat.”

Yessir.

When the whole table got their food, Ray uncovered his now lukewarm soup and started his lunch.

This was such a subtle, silent act of both caring and leadership that it floored me. On my own, a million pages wouldn't have discovered a little detail like that. I learned more about my fictional character from one week with Ray than I could have in 10,000 television hours.

That’s what stirring the stew is all about, Charlie Brown. I have to watch the people and places around me. Let them speak to me. If I’m listening, I can create things that are beyond the four walls of my mind. After all, in anything artistic, we’re trying to capture a truth. We may put our own little bend on it, but it’s hopefully a universal truth that’s relatable. I can’t relate unless I’m with my surrounding people and places.

By the way, this isn’t about Big City vs. Small Town. I grew up in a small town and although I live in Los Angeles now, I still feel more comfortable in small towns. It’s more about shaking things up— if I never left my Small Town, Massachusetts, I’d hopefully be taking field trips to the big city and drawing on those.

This also isn’t just about location. I can stir the stew in my own town. Here’s a list of Californian places I've yet to visit:

  Big Bear

  Big Sur

  The Getty Villa

  Catalina Island

 

What creative detail would come out of visiting these places? Who the hell knows. That’s the whole point. It may tap into something within or it may not, but I’ve got to chase these things like an adrenaline junkie chases base jumping opportunities.

May we all have what the Zen Buddhists call “beginner’s mind.” (shoshin [初心] When our minds are open and eager, our creative projects become rich and detailed.

If we keep that beginner's mind, even our worst dating encounters are going to shake the artistic foundation and bring about new details. Whatever the crazy person across the table is saying, doing, or looking like, it’s going to make it into your work somehow.

What are some ways you stir the stew? Let me know. Or just tell me about your worst dating encounter.