Ideas are building blocks

Ideas in themselves are only building blocks, and have the same significance that a pile of stones does to a finished cathedral. Here are some ideas that might or might not make an article. "I worked at IBM for twenty years. Boy do I have a lot of stories about that place." So what? Does a collection of office stories make a book? Not in and of themselves. A comic strip, maybe, but not a book. "I've climbed Mount St. Helen seven times." Great. It might make conversation at a party, but it won't make a story without something more. "I teach in a preschool. The kids are always doing something cute." Unless you're Art Linkletter, probably only the parents are going to be interested in what their child did that day. "I went from being a librarian to working at Amazon.com." Yawn. Not too much to get the heart rate up there. "Twenty years ago I moved from the East Coast to the West, driving across the country." It might make a travelogue, but it takes more to be a story. What's wrong with the above ideas? They are only raw data. They speak to the 'author' only As they currently stand, they are reminiscences, not a story.

So what do you do with these ideas? Step 1. Focus them Is one particular part of your experience most relevant to you? For instance, did any part of your experience at IBM change you? How and why? What part of the climb up St. Helen appealed to you most? What are the highlights of the climb? In preschool, what is one particular child doing that is different than the rest? What are you suddenly seeing in all the children? What part of the day is most humorous/frustrating/rewarding? What part of your outlook changed when you went from being a librarian to working for an Internet retailer? What part of the trip from East to West inspired you the most? What challenges did you face moving from one culture to another? In this first step, you are forming the ideas into a logical arrangement, and making decisions about what to keep and what to toss.

Focus your ideas

Put the ideas in context

Step 2. Put the ideas in context. How does your time at IBM relate to the computer revolution? How did your job fit in with the larger mission of the company? What groundbreaking things were you part of? How is climbing Mount St. Helen different from other mountains in the Cascade Range? How is mountain climbing like or unlike other extreme sports? Do you do it for the same reason as others do other equally strenuous things? How does daycare affect children? How are they different from children brought up at home? What do you see that parents are missing? Librarians and Amazon.com both deal with books. How are the two the same, and how different? How much of it is specific to Amazon.com, and how much to retail versus nonprofit in general? How is each moving into the future, and which has the 'better' idea of how the future should/will be? How is the culture of the West Coast different from the East Coast, and how much of it affected you? How many people make that sort of move a year, and how many of them stay in the new location? As you probably noticed, in this step, the ideas have moved from strictly personal reminiscences to needing some research to make them more generally applicable, and thus taken the first real step to becoming a story or article.

Step 3. Make them relevant By weaving the story of your time at IBM in with the general story of the computer revolution, you are letting others know the history of those years from a personal point of view, and imparting to others the significance of those years. They can then see how the computer revolution affected their lives. Climbing Mount St. Helen becomes a symbol of pushing yourself to more than you ever believed you could. Or it becomes a symbol of success on a personal level. This can easily become an inspirational, motivational story for your reader, challenging them to make the same sort of effort in their own lives. They daycare story could talk about how much parents miss by putting their children in preschool, and by contrast how much the teacher gains. Or perhaps a humorous article about the funny things kids do, to remind parents how much they should be enjoying their own. By comparing and contrasting libraries and Amazon.com, you could focus on how differently people look for information now--what is lost, what is gained. You could talk about what value library experience brings to a bookseller, and what a bookseller could teach a library. Moving from East to West could concentrate on the magnificence of the United States, and how the country changes as you move across it. You could focus on how the different culture changes you, and how you feel when you visit the East again. You could talk about how the physical distance affects family relationships. This last step develops your personal experiences so that they speak to other people's lives, and change them, make them think, etc.

Make your ideas relevant

"Where do you get your ideas?"

Where do you get your ideas? From anywhere. But an author knows how to focus them, put them in context, and to make them relevant to readers.

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