Summary

The writer describes their creative process, comparing it to a bowl of noodles representing various story ideas.

Abstract

The writer uses a metaphor of a bowl of noodles to describe the many story ideas they have in their head. They explain how they decide which story to write about and how their ideas can change over time. They discuss the challenges of having too many ideas and the struggle to choose which one to focus on.

Opinions

The writer finds their creative process to be overwhelming and chaotic, with many ideas competing for their attention.
They enjoy the process of discovering new ideas and find inspiration in unexpected places, such as a conversation with a winemaker.
The writer acknowledges the difficulty of choosing which idea to pursue and the potential for good ideas to be forgotten or dismissed.
They also recognize the potential for inspiration to come from unexpected sources, such as a French supermarket chain's "Blabla" checkout lines.
The writer ultimately embraces the chaos of their creative process, allowing the "fittest" idea to rise to the top and become the story of the day.

WRITING

If You Sliced Off The Top of My Head, This Is What It Would Look Like . . .

Photo by montatip lilitsanong on Unsplash

And if you were holding up chopsticks, as shown in the picture, each noodle would represent a single story vying for my attention.

The ones still in the bowl are ideas I’ve made notes on and discarded, maybe just temporarily, but I won’t be writing about them today. To continue the metaphor, if they stay in the bowl long enough, they’ll eventually get cold and probably have to be tossed. Although . . . check out that one off to the left, Maybe be worth another look? I’ll think about it later.

That’s exactly what my head feels like right now — a huge bowl of squirming pasta. No red sauce and sausage though, or the image gets a little much.

This morning, barely awake, I lay in bed trying to decide what story strand to pull from the bowl.

Yesterday, I had an idea about how certain women writers inspire me. I was still noodling (sorry, I can never resist a pun) around with that, feeling quite excited about it, when we left for a rendezvous (French for an appointment, but much more romantic, n’est ce pas? Another story noodle? )with a winemaker in the next village.

The wine was excellent, the winemaker was charming and as we chatted back and forth — our fractured French, his few words of English — it occurred to me that this would make a great French village life piece. Something like: While my life in France bears little resemblance to Peter Mayle’s experience, now and then I do see the similarities. Like this afternoon for instance.

Here’s the vigneron, entertaining us with his excellent wine

So, as the afternoon wore on and we sampled a little more wine, this story noodle rose further and further up the chopstick and the inspiring women writer story fell into the bowl.

I hope I’m not pushing this metaphor too far because I haven’t quite finished with it.

Somehow things changed overnight. As appealing as the wine story noodle sounded yesterday, this morning it had cooled off and was sliding down into the bowl with all the other lukewarm noodles, probably getting the evil eye from the women writer noodle.

And, on the rise, an entirely new and rather enticing noodle.

I’d just read that some French supermarket chains have installed ‘Blabla’ checkout lines where lonely customers can get a bit of social interaction by chatting with friendly cashiers.

While I applaud the sentiment, it seems to me there’s more than enough chit-chat going on between customers and cashiers already. The check out lines, the loaded trolleys, the single cashier. Merde. But as much as I’d like to twirl this one around the chopstick for a closer look, I’m going to resist.

Mostly because yet another idea noodle, this one about relationships and domestic duties inspired, just a few moments ago, by my partner explaining for the umpteenth time exactly how the dishwasher should be loaded and, while he’s at it, wondering why it is that I’m incapable of replacing tops on bottles. At the risk of domestic disharmony, I’d really, really like to write about that particular noodle — possibly too hot and dangerously seasoned though.

So what is the answer? Am I just a disorganized hot mess? Should I dump the entire bowl of noodles and carefully consider each new idea on a pristine plate? Use it or lose it?

Or is my bowl of noodles an embarrassment of riches? I’ve read articles describing ways to generate ideas. This suggests there are actually writers with empty bowls.

I can’t even imagine it.

For now, I’m just going to go with a sort of Darwinian approach; the survival of the fittest noodle will be the story du jour.

Unless something else comes up.

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