The good idea fairy

Confession: my best writing ideas come to me when I am cooking ground meat.

Surprised? I am. Why does the good idea fairy have to visit me when I’m cooking dinner? Why can’t it be when I’m sitting on the mountaintops where Julie Andrews spun around in the opening scene for “The Sound of Music”? Or relaxing on a completely empty sandy beach drinking a cold beverage that never runs out and magically I never have to pee? Why does it have to be ground meat? That’s so… disappointing. 

But it is the truth. It’s also reality whereas the things I mentioned above are complete fantasy. There is nothing glamorous when it comes to me cooking ground beef or sausage. (Side note: I absolutely hate cooking meat—why can’t I get good ideas when I’m chopping vegetables or baking brownies?). I do not like ground meat. It’s a whole thing that I don’t want to spend time writing about. And cooking it? Honestly, I think it is kind of violent. I’m not just stirring the meat around until it browns—I have to jab at it and break it up with a kitchen utensil that is somehow always missing. It’s also loud—there is the sizzling of the meat, the stovetop fan suction thing that only has two settings: 1. Is this thing even on? Or 2. I cannot hear anything in a 20 mile radius. It’s also loud because my oldest child is standing two inches from my face usually asking me questions about theology, Minecraft, or engineering while my middle child complains of hunger but says she doesn’t want what I’m cooking and my youngest is riding across the tile floor on a caterpillar scooter saying “choo-choo” and the freaked out dogs are at my legs trying to hide from her. It is only in that perfect mix of chaos that the good idea fairy shakes her wand over my head and I think of something I need to write about. 

It’s magic. 

The only problem is that it is the worst time to stop what I’m doing and write. So I simply go to my “to-do” list on my phone and type in whatever the idea was. Actually that isn’t true. I type in words that help me remember the idea. For example, if the idea is “I need to write about how I get my best writing ideas when I’m cooking ground meat and that it makes no sense because I hate cooking meat and cooking it is so violent” I end up typing “ideas writing ground sausage so violent.” Then I go back to cooking. 

And that, my friends, is my formula for getting the hardest part done. You see, writing isn’t actually hard for me. It energizes me. I could sit at my desk all day and write, write, write. The hard part for me is a combination of knowing what to write about and remembering what it was I wanted to write about. Never assume that you will remember what you think you will remember. Especially if it is good stuff. Us writers get overconfident that we would never forget a good line or idea. But we do—and we cannot afford to. We can’t afford to waste our time trying to remember. So just do yourself a favor and when you get an idea, write it down and put it in a place that it can’t get lost. Send yourself a voice memo or email if you have to. You never know when the good idea fairy will visit again and her deliveries are meant only for you. 

You’re a lucky writer if you discover a pattern to when the deliveries come. It may not be how you want them to come or when you want them to come but if you know when to be on the lookout, you can accept the deliveries and quickly get onto the business of changing the world through your writing.