I think every aspiring writer has at one time or another wondered where to get ideas for his stories. I read somewhere that this was a question Harlan Ellison was asked regularly enough that he had a pat answer: “A little idea factory in Schenectady.”

The place must have closed. An extensive web search yielded neither a phone number nor an email address. Pity.

So I thought “Hell, I’m an engineer, I’ll build an idea generator!”

The technology proved to be remarkably simple. At first I was thinking of software, but I realized that even that offered more sophistication that was needed.

The key ingredient was a package of Avery microperforated business card stock, # 08471. Afer a few hours on the computer and a few minutes with the laser printer, I was equipped with a stack of about fifty cards, each with a classic science fiction theme or idea printed on it, i.e. Artificial Intelligence, On The Moon, Flying Cars, etc.

I shuffled the deck and dealt three cards face up:

            Spaceships    

            Time Travel     

            Drug with side effects

Hmm. Star Trek, The Original Series. City on the Edge of Forever

Wow, this thing really works. Lets try it again:

            Child with special powers 

            Alien invasion 

            It wasn’t a simulation

Orson Scott Card. Ender’s Game

Yikes! This is amazing! Eat your heart out, Harlan. Schenectady, indeed. Harrumph!

Oops, gotta go now, I just got an idea for a story!

If it’s a particularly warm and pleasant morning, and if I wake up early and in a particular mood, I’m likely to pull on a pair of swim trunks and take the 3-mile bicycle ride to Menauhant Beach. At 6:15 AM or so the place is desolated. A few hours later it will be overrun with tourists, but at 6:15 I have it to myself. The wind is dead calm, and in a few moments I’m floating on my back, enjoying the serenity, the views, and the occasional shriek of a seagull.

And then I hear it. Barely audible in the distance, at first I mistake it for the sound of some sort of mini-bike or go-kart. But then it resolves itself in my mind.

A bagpipe!

Whoever is playing is working at it – I can hear him struggling with the fingering. But his rendition of Amazing Grace is quite recognizable, and the imperfections seem to make it sound even more heartfelt and authentic than when I’ve heard it played by a pro.

For a while, I relax and enjoy the serenade, but I can’t leave this undiscovered. I swim to shore, towel off, get dressed, and start biking in the direction of the sound. The strange organization of fences around the parking lot (and the fact that a channel runs through the middle of it) delay me a bit, but eventually I thread my way to the source. The fellow is wearing a tee shirt and shorts (not a kilt), and staring out toward the water. He’s wearing ear protection.

For a while, I just lean back against my bike and enjoy the music. Eventually he pauses, notices me there, and unseats an earplug. “Hope I didn’t scare you,” he offers by way of introduction.

I tell him I’m a long-time admirer of the GHB and was enjoying his work from the other side of the beach. We chat for a while; he’s been training for slightly more than a year and just recently transitioned from the chanter to an actual set of pipes. I ask how he found an instructor and he tell me that he’s a police officer, so he had no problem. Somehow that makes complete sense to me. Apparently his wife won’t let him practice at home, so he’s here on the beach. Pearls before swine, in my opinion, and I never met the lady.

Unfortunately today is a work day for me, so I bid him farewell and begin the ride home. And I as I hear his music recede in the distance, I reflect on how I always wanted to learn, but never got started. Some research online yields a few resources, which all seem to converge on a single book. Its now on its way from Amazon. You never know.

I love this place.

At the suggestion of many, I’ve joined a writer’s group. We meet to share and  critique each others work, and hopefully improve our skills through the experience. I’ve got a short story in progress that depends upon a unique ‘twist’ at the end to make its point. I’d shared it with about four people before submitting it to the writer’s group, and only about half the readers ‘got’ the ending. So I rewrote that part, making it more obvious.

Then I sprung it on the group. Only about half the readers there got it, and of the two that didn’t, one was the member I was *sure* would get it.

So, its back to the drawing board, I guess. There was a suggestion to drop a clue or two early on, but I’m not sure how I can do that without tipping my hand.

A few weeks after the Big Trip, when I reflect back on it I can’t help but marvel over the ordinariness of the flying part. A combination of planning and flexibility resulted in the vast majority of the trip going according to schedule, and when it didn’t, we were able improvise, adding a new, interesting city (Savannah) to the itinerary.

But when you think about it, planning and flexibility are opposites. Eisenhower got it right when he said “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Our plans provided a baseline from which to stray, and a willingness to do so made the trip run smoothly.

Back in another life, I held a management position in a Fortune 500 company, and remember getting into a heated discussion with another employee. (Associate? Staff member? Cast member? Your call). She was part of a four-person department dedicated to enforcing the rules in their standardized planning book for product development. Unfortunately, the rules were so constraining that pretty much nothing got done unless they were bent or broken, which was something I had the authority to do. I summed up my feelings about process at that time of it by saying “… I’m not a big fan of it; it stifles creativity and deals poorly with exceptions.” I still feel that way now, but the years (about twelve of them) have made me less vociferous on the subject. Or maybe its just that I’m now twelve years removed from that environment.

Two days before our trip, I painstakingly entered thirteen flight plans into my on-board GPS. Over the course of the trip, I flew eight of them, entered three more, and flew only two of those. But having them on tap provided a foundation, and creating the first thirteen was good practice for the others.

Probably I should read up more on Eisenhower. He may have some other good advice.