Spider plant ideation
A genetic clone, but with a mind of its own. (Image by Aritha)
When I first started writing regularly, I had a bunch of stuff already on my list to write about.
These were the practices I had developed over the years, the methodologies I taught to students, and the saved-up stories from years of teaching and small business experimentation.
But I was concerned that my supply was finite. I figured I only had a few months worth of stuff, and then I was going to be tapped out.
What I didn’t realize was that ideas are a renewable resource.
And like plants, they can be propagated. A new one can arise from the existing source, capable of being separated from its parent to continue life as a distinct entity, capable of perpetuating the cycle anew.
Think of your typical five-paragraph essay. Like a spider plant, it has a fractal nature: At any scale, the structure is the same. A thesis statement is supported by three points, which in turn are supported by three supporting facts.
Thus, each of those points in support of the thesis could be spun off into its own five-paragraph essay, becoming the thesis statement. Each of the supporting facts would then be expanded into its own paragraph, supported, in turn, by a series of facts or additional details.
It also goes the other way: Our original thesis statement could be but a supporting point in some other essay, or even a minor detail supporting another point in another essay, all the way out on the farthest branch.
Therefore, to create something new, you can revisit something you’ve already created, clip off a piece, and let it take root. Before long, you’ve built something that stands on its own.
Of course, your ideas are not clones of each other the way spiderettes are clones of the original spider plant. Maybe you’ve created a hardy Frankenstein’s monster through grafting. Or perhaps your existing ideas are filtered through the lens of new experiences you’ve had and mingle with other ideas, much more like pollination from a metaphorical standpoint. In any case, what I’m saying is that ideas can not only be reproduced, they reproduce.
This is starting to sound kind of unhinged, so let’s bring it back to the practical. If I can’t think something to write about, I can take a paragraph of an existing blog post and spin it out into its own piece, or I can go broader and put the existing idea into a new context.
I can also put the same idea into a new format. A blog post can become a video and vice versa. Prose can become a poem and vice versa. It never ends.
If you have no existing works to draw upon, the question then becomes, how do you start? Where do you get that first seed to put into the soil?
Easy: Steal it from someone else’s garden. Better yet, steal a cutting that they won’t miss. By the time you’ve put it in your own pot, it will no longer be recognizable as theirs.
A piece of art or content can begin in a question, an image, a song you hear, a line in a book, an annoying ad you keep seeing, or something you’ve previously created. Take it, repot it, water it, and watch it grow. The runners it sends out and the fruit it bears will be the genesis of still more ideas and useful creations. It never ends.
