A writer's secrets to catching creative ideas | Brad Herzog | TEDxMonterey

this is me 1978 summer camp northern Wisconsin I had a full head of hair I had Buddy Holly glasses and I swear to you at the other end of that fishing line I had a huge fish unfortunately there's no photo to prove it nobody thought of taking a picture of the TAM fish but that's okay use your imagination think of all the possibilities at the other end of that line and that's essentially what I'm going to talk about today is creative possibilities as a writer as the author of more than 30 books and scores of magazine articles and I've been a freelance writer for more than two decades I'm often asked about the writing process where do you write when do you write how do you write valid questions but that ignores half the battle when you're trying to craft a literary masterpiece and that is simply this what the heck are you going to write about good writing begins with a great idea an idea so compelling that an editor or publisher can't pass it up an idea is so compelling that a reader can't pass it by if you're leafing through a magazine you're not stopping on a story because of the writing really you're stopping because of the idea the subject matter it's my job to catch those ideas when they come to me wherever they come from and turn them into something delicious so I thought I baked this but that basically describes many of the roles that we play in our professional lives too by the way that we're often tasked with coming up with a unique way of looking at things so I thought before they take you on a little fishing expedition of my creative process my stories through the years in the hope that it would offer some insight into the spectrum of possibilities out there so I'll start this way who remembers the movie castaway starring Tom Hanks good movie right great movie you know who wrote that movie it wasn't me I have no I have no idea who wrote that movie but it's a great movie and it's Tom Hanks is on a FedEx plane it crashes into an ocean he's stranded on a deserted island he's trying to figure out a way to eat and survive and eventually FedEx boxes start washing ashore and finally starts opening some of them he takes way too long could have been a you know Swiss Army knife and a satellite phone and one of them but finally he starts opium and he opens one and he pulls out a dress and it's made out of leather and a sort of mesh material at the bottom and you're thinking well that's useless but in the very next scene you see that he's taking that mesh material and he's created of fishing that out of it and he's caught some fish and he's look he can eat for the first time on the island basically what he did was he turned he took the mundane and he turned it into the miraculous and that's often what I try to do everything in my daily existence my mundane daily existence can be fodder for a clever and creative idea it's just a matter of sort of tilting my head at the world a little bit questioning everything and what I like to call wondering out loud I wonder about everything even the most mundane things how many times have have we tied our shoes in our lifetime ten thousand times 20 thousand times one day I was tying my shoe and I looked down and I wondered who designed the nike swoosh it's one of the most iconic recognized logos in the world somebody came up with it so I looked into it and I wrote about a woman named Carolyn Davidson who was a graphic design student in Oregon in 1971 and Phil Knight approached her and asked her to come up with something and she came up with that you know when she was paid for that $35 yeah she later got stock options she's fine going but that came from me time I sure one day a short while after that I was wandering the grocery aisles and I was somehow I ended up in the baby food aisle actually I know why I had babies and I looked and I wondered who is the Gerber baby that adorable drawing has been on the jar of Gerber baby food since 1928 somebody posed for that drawing and there have been rumors throughout the years is it Humphrey Bogart Katharine Hepburn Bob Dole it turns out it's a woman named Ann Turner cook who is a self nowis 87 year old self-published mystery writer in Tampa Florida she'll always be the world's most famous baby so what I did was I combined those two ideas and I wrote a magazine article about the origins of some of us our most iconic advertising images through the years the Michelin Man the Morton Salt girl the NBC Peacock that sort of thing and it all started with me tying my shoe and wandering the grocery aisles so anything can be fodder for an idea even more mundane things like that even like eating I was I was once tasked with writing a book but from an educational publisher writing a book for fifth graders and the assignment was making 120 pages long and make it funny that was a sign that's not easy 120 pages was about 24,000 words 24,000 words of funny is not easy I was panicking I could not think of an idea I was wandering around my house thinking what's funny what's funny and then I wandered into my kitchen I opened the fridge got something to eat close the fridge now when you open the refrigerator the light turns on in the fridge when you close it the light turns off that came an idea I wrote a book called Freddie in the fridge about a little 8-inch man who lives in the refrigerator sleeps on the cottage cheese and his only job is to turn the light on and off every time pretty smart right he gets out of the fridge he falls get to school he creates all kinds of trouble it's a pretty funny book but how did I get that idea I was hungry that's how that idea came to me so they can come from anywhere and wondering out loud is a great way to go about it this this might serve as a great visual metaphor for the creative process often we're all sort of fishing in the same spot it might be a good spot it might be a popular spot I'm a writer what's popular these days wizards and vampires right it just makes me not want to write about wizards and vampires I'd rather drop my line somewhere else find my own little fishing hole it's a lot easier to get attention that way it's not easier to be unique that way so I'd like to one way I love to do that is by countering conventional wisdom surprise people make them expect the unexpected sort of and there's lots of ways to go about doing that one way I did this I once wrote a magazine article about some of the most famous miss quotes in history by that I mean for example and none of the 44 stories that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes did his detective ever actually say elementary my dear Watson not once he said elementary he said my dear Watson he never put the two together that came later in the movies never said it James Cagney and none of his films did he ever actually say you dirty rat he came close he said worse things but he never said you dirty rat Captain Kirk in none of the original 79 Star Trek episodes did he ever actually say the four words beam me up Scotty that would be his epitaph he never actually said it so if I could surprise people if I could make them rethink things that's a great that's a great way to go about things my favorite example of that is I once wrote a magazine article about an old college professor of mine who did a he's a psychology professor and he did a study about Olympic medalists and he basically examined their reaction medium nth when they found out the results and then on the medal stand and he came to the conclusion that on the whole bronze medalists are actually more satisfied than silver medalists it depends who you compare yourself to it actually comes from an old Jerry Seinfeld bit I wish I could imitate his voice I can't but I'll do the bit he basically said you know if you win the gold medal you're happy if you win the bronze medal you're thinking well at least I got something if you win the silver medal it's or like well congratulations you almost won right out of all the losers you're the number one loser now that's funny but there's a profundity to that - it makes you rethink things and if I could make the reader rethink things that's a victory for my idea and it's a great hook for an idea all right speaking of hooks let's go back to fishing this is my dad that's where I got my eyesight his name is actually bud when my when my dad and I were fishing on the and that at that summer camp in lake nebagamon wisconsin he would always tell me that when you get the first little nibble at the end of your fishing rod don't drink your fishing rod right away you'll lose the fish you wait for that second stronger they will you wait for that third really strong bite and then you hook the fish and you reel it in the analogy for what I do would be don't jump the gun on your idea let it percolate a little bit think about it for a while and essentially find the real story I was once reading the fine print of a sports encyclopedia and by the way the fine print is where I get some of my best ideas everyone else ignores it I was once reading an atlas and and I looked at the tiniest little dots on the map and I realized they started to have that a lot of them had names like harmony California wisdom Montana pride Alabama justice West Virginia inspiration Arizona that turned into a whole 400 page travel memoir that I wrote about searching for virtue in America and those places started with an analyst so the fine print is my friend but I was reading the fine print of encyclopedia and I noticed a list of intercollegiate tennis champions through the years and noticed that the 1892 tennis champ was a guy named Bill Larned this guy right here and he was a student at Cornell University I happen to be a Cornell University graduate and I've written for the alum magazine for about 20 years now so I thought okay we don't have very many athletic champions at Cornell that's a great nice little sports story for Cornell but then I looked into it further and I discovered that after he graduated bill Larned won seven national titles which is a record and over the course of 20 years he was ranked in the top 10 19 times that's a remarkable record of longevity so I thought okay I didn't rise he's actually a Hall of Fame tennis player so it's a bigger sports story but I still thought it was basically a sports story but then I wondered what's the real story and it turns out I wondered what happened that one year that he wasn't ranked in the top ten it was 1898 right in the middle of his career what happened that year well it turns out that 1898 was the year of the spanish-american war and Bill Larned was one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders that feeling that you're having right now is the feeling that I get when I realize that's the real story so I wrote about that it was it wasn't a story about a tennis player it was a story about a guy who was part of a crew a motley crew of Ivy League athletes and outlaws who rushed San Juan Hill with a future president during the spanish-american war that was the story deadlines about him being the tennis champion in 1892 was one line of the story I found the real story so often it takes a little bit of patience that's part of the creative process and obviously patience is a big part of the fishing process as well in fact I'm reminded of a great line by the other comedian Steven Wright he said there's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot but it's all about patience right so patience is a virtue and it could be part of the creative process and sometimes that means not only finding the idea but figuring waiting and figuring out how to convey the idea I I love I like to fish I love golf and I found out something that I thought was pretty funny several years ago believe it or not there are actually professional miniature golfers it's not their full-time job but they travel the different tournaments around the country and they can win as much as three or five grand for winning a miniature golf tournament now before you decide to all switch careers they're really good they usually get a hole-in-one the worst they ever get is a two but I thought that was pretty funny professional miniature golfer so I thought it'd be a nice magazine article but I want I didn't feel like I had the right the right angle that's what I'm have to find the right angle I didn't I needed the right way to tell the story then I found out that there's an event that takes place every September called the Masters of miniature golf it's the national championship of miniature golf the best miniature golfers from all over the world converge in Myrtle Beach South Carolina and compete for this tournament I thought okay that's a good framework for the for the story a better way for me to tell this story but I still didn't think I had the right angle the right attitude for the story so that I thought well what if I actually compete in a tournament what if I try to win the Masters of miniature golf and what if I write about that sort of my Walter Mitty account of competing in the Masters of miniature golf and I write about it so I went to Myrtle Beach and I entered the tournament there were 31 people in the tournament twenty-eight of them were essentially professional miniature golfers really good two of them were a couple of grandparents on vacation in Myrtle Beach who entered the tournament and one was myself I'm not bad at golf I actually got a hole-in-one on my first two holes and I started thinking I'm going to win this thing forget the story I'm going to win this thing well it turns out that after 72 holes out of the 31 golfers I finished 31st I finished in last play the grandparents beat me they're better than they looked now was that bad it was a little embarrassing I really did try to win but it was one of the best stories I've ever written was about how I finished in last place in the national championship of miniature golf rule 1a of writing his show don't tell and instead of telling the reader how intense this competition was and how good these golfers were I showed the reader in a funny way all about that by showing how bad I was compared to them it's a much better way to tell the story so when you're creating an idea there are different aspects to it there's conceiving the idea there is developing the idea and there's conveying the idea and if you can put that all together sometimes you can catch something really special sometimes you don't sometimes all you catches something like the head but that's okay because always always the act of pursuing creativity is a triumphant act so I want to leave you with a quote from Henry David Thoreau who knew his way around a pond he said everyone should believe in something I believe I'll go fishing thank

Channel: TEDx Talks

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Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Sat May 10 2014