Oh man, research. I intentionally left that out of the post, but I'm glad you touched on it. For me, there have been ecstatic moments during research when everything connects and suddenly it's clear what must be written. Until it's on paper and it's shit. It seems like you're a productive guy. When you say you're fucked, does that mean it's a problem that needs to be fixed or is it just the way things are?
"Until it's on paper and it's shit." If you mean what I think you mean--that everything clicks and angels start singing and your iPod just started playing the BEST FUCKING SONG EVAR in your headphones, but when you try to write it all down it just evaporates and it feels like your pen's ink is made from cardboard--I know that. I didn't get to go to college, and perhaps as a consequence I fear that I've missed all the important things about what I like to study and write about. There's this class, y'see, where the professor goes "oh by the way, this is the equation you have to memorize, and which is never seen outside these walls, and after that you'll be safe to pontificate about anything without fear of embarrassing criticism." So when I research I put some more personal "oomph" into it to compensate. When I say I'm fucked, I don't know if it's a problem that needs to be fixed or if it's the way things are. That's the nature of the fucked-ness. I think it might be on the verge of a coping mechanism, and that makes me kick like a mule: Oh-Well-I'm-Screwed-Might-As-Well-Get-On-Social-Security. Urrggg!! shivers Do Not Want. I've noticed that other people believe they lack an important function--such as socialization, expressing themselves to a lover, treating subordinates as human, taking initiative, whatever--and although it's often kinda right, it's the attention that helps. Most of us are not cast in the molds of fictional stereotypes with immutable "critical flaws," so we can address and repair our problems. So when I say I'm fucked, and then say I don't know exactly how, you're watching someone trying to figure out how. I don't want to believe that this is "just the way things are." To properly answer the question, I don't think "just the way things are" is anything more than a holiday, but the fix for the problem is going to be personal. You asked how people generate ideas and keep track of them, and it's that second half which, I posit, is most important. It's why I keep trying different things. By accident, I think I've discovered that the persistent act of trying different techniques is what keeps things circulating in my head, and therefore my long term memory. My "technique" is to keep trying techniques :-)
I like that. Yeah, I think that you're right in that keeping track of the ideas is the important part of the question. One thing I've been noticing recently is that older ideas are kind of percolating through to stuff I've been producing lately. I'll write something and then get the feeling I've experienced it before. Then, I'll go digging and find that what I've written is kind of an expansion or a different point of view of something I've worked on previously. Honestly, your technique is something that I paid a whole lot of money to learn in university. Speaking only from my own experience, there is no magic equation. I am shocked at the people I know from college who have gone on to be successful and respected. Shit, even revered. My good friend who was in the creative writing program with me started shacking up with a girl who reminded me so much of a cow in looks and mannerisms, not to mention intellect. I wake up one day a few years back, to find that she's involved with a big project involving the arts and the internet and co-founded by an influential magazine. She's done interviews and been given awards and a bunch of other shit that makes people who don't know her think she's hip, cool and smart. My point is, part of the right to pontificate is perception. Case in point: you've got a whole website dedicated to your words and writing credits. Me? I'm just some dude on the internet. And yes, that's exactly what I meant, about angels and the flaccid pen. During a discussion about this very thing with my advisor in university, he told me that sometimes you have a great idea for a poem and that's all it is. You get an idea of what the product will be like and have a vague idea of how to accomplish it and it just turns into nothing. Sometimes the thing to do, according to him, is to let the idea stay there on the edge, while you begin writing about it. That is, realizing things on paper while holding a thought at arm's length might often work better.