A hundred moments in autism - The ideas mine

I am always looking for story ideas, constantly on the lookout for an overheard phrase, a character, a situation, anything that triggers an idea.

For hours, days, weeks, sometimes months, nothing comes, but then, when it does come, the ideas flow in a rush, as if I’ve spent hour after hour hacking frustratingly at the rock hard wall of the ideas mine, and then suddenly I hit a seam, and the ideas flow into me in a rush. Before I can fully form the first story a second appears, and then sometimes a third. I struggle to write them all down, it is a manic, wonderous experience.

These creative flows seem pure autism, I’ve never met a neurotypical who has these creative surges in the same way.

These flows are less frequent now, but one of my favourites was the duck playing snooker.

I was riffing mentally, throwing around words, concepts, just panning the ideas river. And then I found the words ‘a duck playing snooker’. For some reason I was now in a flow.

The first story was about a psychologist showing a patient a Rorschach inkblot test, in which the patient sees a picture of a duck playing snooker.  Even as I’m thinking it the second story appears - about a Victorian gentleman who had purchased a selection of intimate photos of women from a specialist purveyor, who finds picture of a duck playing snooker in amongst the nudes.

Then the third, about the auction of a previously undiscovered Constable painting of a duck playing snooker. I throw in political corruption, a yak and a female snooker referee. Everything I could possibly need for a story.

The surge passes.  I scan my brain for more ideas, but the flow has passed. All that is left is the uninspired bit, the actual writing of the story. Then I start again, laboriously hacking away at the rock hard wall of the ideas mine.