Sometimes people want to know where writers get ideas from. That question always gets me thinking. Where do I really get ideas from? I also ask writer friends the same. I get the impression, every time, that we don’t really know. It’s part of the mystery of writing. And it’s great that it is so. I don’t believe there’s a mechanism to get ideas. Or some kind of imaginary pond, where we can fish a silvery, slippery fish-idea. That would be great, since I would know, as a writer, that I definitely will get new ideas. Because, the truth is that, after I finish one book, I never know if I will write another one, if another idea will be good enough. There’s this unpredictability that writers have to deal with. Once you know, say, how to drive a car, you can drive any number of cars. Once you write a novel, it’s safe to say that it’s unclear whether or not you will be able to write another one. Or, at least, one that you (and publishers) think it’s worth publishing. 

I have come to think that somehow - maybe - the process is reverse. It’s not you getting ideas, but ideas getting to you. Argentinian writer/legend Julio Cortázar said that the stories that he wrote already existed and that his job as a writer was to turn them into language. So, it’s ideas that get you, not the other way around. That’s a funny way to think about it. It gives the impression that ideas are creatures that haunt or possess writers. At their own will, I might add. Which, of course, is the bothersome side of the deal. As for me, I find the idea both true and impossible at the same time. I am willing to accept that, within all that inexplicability of the appearance of the idea, there’s a part that is not up to the writer. That much I will admit. It doesn’t depend on how much you try to have an idea. It will come. Or it won’t. 

I would say ideas are, at least in my experience, a mixture of things. On the one hand, they are a state of mind. Let me explain. The very fact that you are in the world as a writer, that you never stop really working as one, or thinking as one, will arrange your mind in a certain way. You will perceive life not just of a set of experiences, but as a set of writing opportunities. For example: my girlfriend left me. I am devastated. It’s terrible. But wait a minute, surely I will be able to write about this at a certain point. That’s the great part of being a writer. You can use experiences to your advantage. If your mind is ready to think about the world in terms of story, you are ready to find it. That is, if your mind is searching (normally unconsciously), it’s bound to find something. 

That is very much the case with my novel Never Tell Anyone Your Name, beautifully translated by Claire Storey. The story came in a completely unpredicted manner. I was travelling with my then-girlfriend from Bordeaux to Madrid by train. In one point, we had to change from the French train to the Spanish train right on the border. When we were ready to get on our Spanish train, we discovered that the dates of our tickets were wrong: they were for the following day. Changing them for the train due to depart at four in the afternoon (the one we had plans to take) was impossible. It was the end of the holidays and the train was full. The best we could do was get a couple of tickets for the midnight service. 

So we were left with eight hours of nothing ahead of us. We were in a small town called Irún, which we had never intended to visit and my girlfriend certainly wasn’t interested in visiting. As for me, I was delighted. It was an unplanned event. It was a small event, all right, but unplanned. I decided to visit this place which was not precisely touristic. As I said before, my girlfriend was not really in, but it was worse to remain in the station, so we went. I knew, as soon as I was out, walking (it was a really cold day), that I was going to write about that. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to write, but I knew I would. That very moment was one that I was going to turn into some kind of story. I even took pictures, as we walked, to be able to remember the places we saw, the path we took. I was, already, in a way, taking notes. 

Of course, it was not that I had the idea ready just then. For here’s the second thing with ideas. When you read a great book, a great story, you are not reading just an idea. You are reading countless hours of hard work, of thinking about how that small idea at the beginning of the process would turn into a novel, for example. And here’s the other thing I wanted to mention: an idea is a process. You develop the idea in the drafts that you write, in the constant thinking about how the idea plays out. The idea is never a finished entity ꟷnot until you publish, I think. And, by then, it’s quite likely that the idea bears but a tiny resemblance to the book that you have. When you look at a tree and you look at the seed that originated it, when you compare them, they seem to be completely different things. And yet, they are the same. 

It took, in the case of my novel, more than ten years for the seed to become a tree. A decade for the idea to become a book. I didn’t work constantly on the idea. I mean, I didn’t turn on the computer and work on it all the time. But my brain did. Both consciously and unconsciously. That’s why, suddenly, there were a couple of days in particular where I felt I had had a breakthrough, a gigantic couple of steps where I had gained understanding of what the idea was. A gigantic step to see this thing that Cortázar mentioned: that the story existed. It was like entering a big room that’s dark, and you don’t get to see very well. But you start finding ways to illuminate it. You turn on some lights. And so you know. You see windows, furniture, paintings hanging on the walls. I think Henry James said something similar about writing characters. 

So, in the end, our relationship with ideas continues to be a mystery. Are they our own creation? Are they something waiting for us, if we are persistent enough? Are they some kind of coworker, of partner that the writer has to function with? I don’t know. I know I am paying attention. All the time. And I know, also, that, no matter what, I will persist. And, if I’m lucky, I will also prevail. 

Federico Ivanier