3.5 Go deep, get primal, start from source
A very common question audiences ask writers is…
Where do you get your ideas?
And writing books have chapters about finding ideas of things to write about.
I’ve never like that use of the word “ideas,” because it seems too left brain and shallow.
I’m thinking now of One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. That book didn’t come from a simple idea. It emerged from her childhood. It had a depth to it that an idea does not have.
And the same with the novels of Toni Morrison. They are not “idea books.” They have a passion to them that can only have come from deep life experience.
This can be true for nonfiction, too. David Schnarch, in his book Passionate Marriage, is passionate about people doing well in their relationships. He doesn’t offer ten easy steps, or ten easy ideas. Instead he feels deeply what he’s writing about and presents deep challenges so his readers can get big results.
If you’re asking yourself, what do I want to write next, instead of looking for a good idea, you might want to…
Go deep, get primal, and start from source.
By which I mean, go back through your life, especially back into early childhood, back to your origin.
And then go deep into your early experiences, and…
Look for the story inside the story.
Let me explain by telling you about my first day of kindergarten, which is now a long time ago…
I was a painfully shy kid and suddenly I was being sent away to spend hours among strangers at a place I’d never been to and I just wasn’t ready for that. It was a simple mismatch.
On that morning, Mom and I stood waiting silently out on our small concrete–slab front porch. Our modest red brick house was still new and it stuck up out of the ground like a cowlick, no bushes growing around it yet to soften the picture. A wood–paneled station wagon rolled down our hill and stopped. Three little faces stared at me through the side window.
Mrs. Johnson got out, came up our walk, smiled, and reached out her hand. I took one obedient step forward, then burst into tears. A terrible thing in a family that didn’t have feelings in private let alone in public. I tried hard to stop my crying but it got away from me. My feet put on their brakes, my body twisted back toward my mom, and in the long tradition of little kids, I begged, “Please let me stay home today. I’ll go tomorrow, I promise.”
I looked up into my mom’s eyes, but she wasn’t looking at me. She stared off down the street, embarrassed. The thought went through my mind, not in words, but like an iceberg: “Won’t look at me…wants me gone.”
So I went. Mrs. Johnson put me next to her on the front seat and talked calmly to comfort me. It was dead quiet in the back. I knew the other kids were studying me earnestly like little scientists. I stopped crying before we were out of sight of my house.
When we got to Mrs. Johnson’s, she took us downstairs to her basement where the kindergarten was. I refused to take my jacket off, found a quiet spot against the wall, stood there at attention, watched the other kids play together in the sandbox, and held tight the paper bag my mom had packed with a banana and two peanut butter cookies for my snack. And that’s how I spent my morning.
On the way home, I made a decision, if an unconscious shift can be called a decision. I did not ever again want to be scared like that. And I did not ever again want to hurt my mom like that. So I became the best good boy I could possibly be, quiet, obedient, and Calvinist. Without thinking it through, I decided that if Mom and Dad were not at ease with kids then I would turn myself into an easy kid. I’d live as lightly as a ghost. I’d sustain myself on holiness instead of love.
Normally you had to wait until you were a teenager and passed the catechism class before you could take your first communion and officially join the church. But this day was my induction. There was no ceremony and no public acknowledgement. I just quietly got with the program. I traded in little–kid me for church me. I would have had to do that sooner or later and this happened to be the day, the day when I decided with generous intent to save my mom, my dad, and my church from the burden of me.
So that’s my story. On the surface a sad defeat. But if you look a little deeper there’s something more. When I got into therapy, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I came home from kindergarten that day with a plan. It was a hopeless strategy because earning approval will never satisfy the hunger for real love.
I got trapped in this irony: I was hurting myself to take care of myself. But it was a plan and it was proactive. So it was one spit better than drowning in despair.
And most importantly, it was me…
Fighting for myself.
I didn’t have the skill I needed to do that well. And I had to bury that urge. But still…
I did have the spirit of fight in me.
And that has stayed with me up to the present. And it’s been the through line of my life. It’s been my favorite thing. It’s been my saving grace.
The title for my coaching pages on my websites is…
Feel for yourself, fight for yourself.
And that’s the theme of my writing. And it’s the heart of my personal life.
So I can find the source of who I’ve become back there in the four–year–old kid.
And it’s my deepest source. Which means for me it’s primal.
And when I was a kid experiencing that first day at kindergarten, and the aftermath, it was a sad, defeating story.
But in my adult years, I’ve found a way to play with that primal spirit. I’ve created books and workshops and had deep conversations with clients and with friends, too, based on…
Feeling then fighting.
Instead of being weighed down by my childhood defeat, I let the spirit of fight keep leading me forward, further and further into a creative, even playful, life.
And I feel so blessed that…
Fight is the story I found inside my story of defeat.
Not everything you write needs to come from a deep place inside. Some authors get an idea that is just an idea and kind of skimpy, but it hits a chord and sells well and they’re happy.
But there is power in going deep and getting to the primal source of what you want to say to the world.
So I recommend making yourself a fight bio. This means collecting stories from throughout your life when you took a stand for yourself or for what you believe in.
This will give you a vivid picture of who you are as a moral person.
I have a friend who stopped bullies from hurting other kids–when she was four years old! And she became a remarkable activist, and in her old age, still is.
Have you ever been in a workshop where they asked you do do a values assessment? They want you to write a list of what matters most to you, like: kindness, team work, creativity, love. All abstract nouns.
These are superficial, undefined indications of your values.
What I like so much better is doing a fight bio, which means doing a story assessment of your values.
Which brings your values to life, makes them vivid, and memorable.
And you might find a story in those stories that you realize you have a deep and urgent desire to tell.
Just before I finish here, I want to add a note. In addition to getting down to your primal source to find your next writing project, you can also go down to the primal source of human behavior.
You can delve into the human operating system, and find lots to work with there.
For example, we humans are dilemmic creatures. We don’t like to admit that, because dilemmas bring with them plenty of pain.
But notice how writing teachers and writing books preach the gospel of conflict. Without conflict your story will fall flat. And many nonfiction works are enlivened by conflict.
Well…
Dilemma is the grandmother of conflict.
It’s an endless source of riveting stories. And it’s something we all need to learn more about just to make our personal lives work better. So there’s plenty there for nonfiction authors.
Note:
For more about creating a fight bio, click here.
For more about our dilemmic nature, click here.
