Ideas and Agony, Plus the Latest in the Window-Sill Wars
Coming up with ideas is, for me, the toughest phase of writing a book. Roughly a year typically passes between the moment I make the final correction in the page proofs of one book, and the start of research on the next. During that period I do everything I possibly can to spark a new idea. I always tell my writing students (on those rare occasions when I do teach) to read voraciously and promiscuously.
I’ll go to my favorite library, the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington here in Seattle, and wander the 900 levels of the Dewey Decimal System, pulling books at random in search of some forgotten but spectacular event from the past. I’ll go to the periodicals department and begin at the A’s and over a series of visits read, or try to read, an issue of every magazine on the shelves, no matter how obscure. In fact, the more obscure, the better. It helps that the Suzzallo Library is quite possibly the best library I’ve ever worked in, with the exception of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.—though the Suzzallo has infinitely better views. I’ll read newspaper obits and whenever I’m in another city doing a talk I’ll try to go to a local museum and read the local newspapers. I’m always surprised at the things I learn. For example, I discovered in the pages of an aerospace magazine that the way jet-engine manufacturers test their engines for their ability to withstand birdstrikes is by throwing birds of various sizes into the whirling blades of an actual engine. This, apparently, is a messy process.
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