I'm listening.

Where do I get ideas?

From you.

Family, friends, strangers on BART, the butcher, the baker. From compliments, insults, and offhand remarks.

Ideas are everywhere. The big question is how to control, organize, and implement them.

I have a very sophisticated way of doing this. It's called The Sticky Way. I have color-coded software stickies on my computer desktop, one for each project or potential project, and as ideas walk through the door of my office, I stick the them in the appropriate place.

(Ideas on my cluttered desktop, with the Boston skyline in the background.)

 

Some of the ideas get a sticky of their own and become whole books. This is called "The Exaggeration Technique."

For example:

• On a visit to a dollhouse museum in Carmel, Indiana, during Bouchercon 2009, I saw a dollhouse with a secret passage. On April 1 of this year, I turned in the manuscript for "Mix-Up in Miniature," featuring a dollhouse with a secret room that holds evidence of a crime.

 • Sitting through my stepdaughter's dressage performance gave me enough material for the equestrian plot in "The Carbon Murder." 

• The endless, frustrating political debates of 2008 sent me crawling back to 1858. I had the citizens of my fictional town of Lincoln Point, CA, reenact a Lincoln-Douglas debate in my 11th novel, "Malice in Miniature," published the next year.

• A woman in my book group casually mentioned her office lottery pool. From that offhand comment I generated the plot of my second Professor Sophie Knowles mystery, "The Probability of Murder," turned over to my editor March 1 of this year.

Moral of the blog: Be careful what you say or do in my presence.

Comments

[Susan C Shea]

Camille, you are amazing. It's one thing to have an idea drift into view, but you grab 'em, shake 'em, and - voila - a whole book!

[Priscilla]

What would we do if we didn't have "sticky ears"? Love this. Makes me feel almost virtuous about compulsive eavesdropping....

[Camille Minichino]

I just have to hang around and observe, but you, Priscilla, actually have to dig into research!

And Susan, I know you have many books almost ready to topple out . . .

[Susan C Shea]

Speaking of eavesdropping: Recent moment: In the lobby of the old hotel in Las Vegas New Mexico, a drunk local from the bar wanders over to the desk clerk, whom he obviously knows. They chat for a minute and the desk clerk says peevishly, "But you DID shoot him. I mean, that has to count." I look over. The drunk is looking slightly abashed.

And even better, this hotel lobby is where a gruesome scene in No Country for Old Men was filmed. It's the same town where Craig Johnson's series, optioned for TV, will be shot.

[Camille Minichino]

That's some story, Susan.
What a good class exercise that would make -- a 300-word story incorporating that quote!

[Staci]

Susan, what a crazy story! Now I want to know all the details about who he shot and why and what happened to the victim.

And Camille, a secret room in a dollhouse sounds like a fantastic plot point!

[Mysti]

Hmm, I clearly spent too much time drinking and not enough time listening in Santa Fe :)

Thanks Camille!

[Susan C Shea]

Ladies, I know nuthin'. I was sitting in the lobby, busy on my laptop (doing my 1,000 words for the day, of course) and could have kicked myself for not picking up what came before the clerk's comment. Shortly after, my friend came in to pick me up. We'll have to use our imaginations, right? After all, we're writers! But move fast - by next week, Camille will have an outline and three chapters done! ;-)

[Margaret Lucke]

Love the picture of your computer desktop, Camille. I have that Stickies program but I've never used it. Now I'm going to play with it and watch the ideas pile up! :-)

[Camille Minichino]

Now you all know my secret -- just put up a stickie and the book writes itself!

[Diana Orgain]

OMG - Camille - what a great post! Yes, ideas are all around us.