My Worst Ideas Came From The Listening Circle

But you can’t have the best without the worst, right?

As a writer, I am vexed day after day racing after new ideas.

I need a consistent and reliable source of fresh insights, new twisty-ties of ideas to wrap around words.

So, I set up a listening circle for myself. That was my first worst idea.

The Listening Circle

Okay, hear me out on this one and set aside your initial, judgmental thought: “You can’t make a circle with just one person, moron.”

I started — casually, without lofty expectations or ridiculous promises — setting aside about 10 minutes of “circle” time daily for one week. Because I’m only one person and cannot create a circle with only myself (see, I knew that), I sat inside my daughter’s hula-hoop, surrounding myself with my iPad and pencil, and my 6-year-old Bernice Mountain dog.

You can probably see why this was my first worst idea and I haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet.

Okay. So the idea was to surround myself with an epic and serene sense of observation and creativity. I wanted to soften my heart and open its door so ideas could accumulate there.

This wasn’t meditation or anything but more like welcoming the universe into my life and allowing past generations to deposit their wisdom in my brain. I know that sounds like I was waiting for a bird fly over and dump one on me, but at the time it felt solid and real.

Then my intent was to listen, to whatever entered my mind and heart and write it down. Here are some of the random ideas I gathered throughout the week:

Is adiposity the same as obesity? Look it up. (In case I didn’t mention it, I’m a nurse practitioner and sometimes my medical life invades my writing life.)

I can feel the weight of my socks on my ankles? Is that a thing?

Write a fable about your professional relationships with your patients. Or not.

Create a list of wimpy verbs for writers.

Write a short story called Midnight that takes place at noon.

You should have stayed in bed today . . .

Write a story about the efforts of a group of people vs a single person trying to change the world

Is it possible to suspend judgment at the same time you’re exercising judgment?

What happens to the people who get lost in the struggle when there are major healthcare changes?

Who’s the worst patient I’ve ever had? I don’t even know . . . probably the lady who insulted my hair the first time I met her.

What is porch candy?

It Was the Best of Ideas

As you can see, my idea-collection is random and, after one week, didn’t produce much substance. Maybe the universe became bored with me. Even my dog lost interest after the second day. When she left, I had to tighten up the circle replacing her with my water bottle and adjusting the hula-hoop.

Some of these ideas are the worst ideas I’ve ever brainstormed . . . um . . . I mean, received from the universe. If the universe gave them to me, then I’m not responsible for how awful they sound, right? They’re not really MY worst ideas but belong, ultimately, on the list of worst ideas from the cosmos.

To be fair, some of the ideas could, if I did the work of planting and watering, bloom into mature and gorgeous ideas for perfectly sound health and medical articles.

In fact, the day after the universe gave my pause on adiposity, I opened an email from Contemporary Pediatrics and read the headline, “Household food insecurity may be tied to infant adiposity.”

There it is again. Adiposity. Maybe the universe really was downloading relevant ideas directly into my mind. The questions poured into my brain . . . How is it that infants who live in households with incomes of less than $20,000 annually, could be at a higher risk of being obese when they have less food available to them? Do obese infants have more medical problems than their normal-weight counterparts?

I could sense a quality article taking shape. My listening circle rocks! Maybe, in the long run, my listening circle is a better idea than obese infants could ever be. Poor little things.

It Was the Worst of Ideas

But is a week of time in the listening circle worth one idea that I may/may not pursue? Maybe a listening circle isn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.

There’s no end to the crazy ways writers find ideas. Even though my listening circle produced a slew of bad ideas, it produced a few favorable ones too. You can’t have the best without the worst, right?

I don’t think it’s possible to collect only grand, sparkling ideas and never have a few dudes in there too. It’s impossible. Well, at least impossible inside the listening circle where I’m open to any idea the world offers. It’s like leaving the screen door open, you don’t get to choose which bugs come in.

The Worst Part of My Listening Circle

The worst part about having a listening circle for the week is that I’m still — at least daily, sometimes hourly — wondering out loud, “What is porch candy anyway?”

Be careful on your own pursuit of writing ideas, fellow writer, it could leave a permanent splosh on your brain when the porch candy melts.