Not searching for ideas

I finally settled on an article topic. I've been looking for an idea for a history piece for weeks. And since I've been doing research for my novel, I also used the research to brainstorm article ideas. I was overwhelmed with ideas. And I didn't like a single one. It was weird. I got exactly what I wanted, but it wasn't helping me.

But, this week I got bored and frustrated and looked up costumes to get my mind off things. Again. That's what I do when I get lazy with research. I look up pretty costumes of the era and waste time. It beats doing something completely off topic, but it's distracting. Eventually I got sidetracked into watching period films just so I could gawk at the costumes. One of the films got me wasting time Googling the subject because it was intriguing. Did it occur to me that there as an article topic here? Nope. I told my sister about it instead. Her eyes glazed over when I started talking about the technical stuff, but she perked up considerably when I got to the bits about executions and general cruelty. That's the thing about history. It's typically just a string of violence.



Still, I didn't even consider writing about what I'd learned. I moved on to actual research and days later the idea hit me like a ton of bricks. My brain does this a lot. I discover something interesting or think of a great idea and shove it into the back of my mind. My subconscious takes over and parses through everything. It takes a while for the conscience part of my brain to catch up. So this is what I've spent the week doing. Not thinking of ideas, but getting them anyway.

Photos courtesy of SXC and SXC