Here are two interesting, funny, and valuable quotes about the process of creation and writing from the late Douglas Adams, creator of the now-legendary SF comedy franchise The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  The two quotes appeared in a piece called “Where do you get all your ideas from?” that appeared in The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:  The Original Radio Scripts (which, incidentally, is the original version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - a BBC radio show).

The first quote is rather blunt about the fact that writing can be hard work:

An idea is only an idea.

An actual script [Adams was writing about radio script writing in this piece], on the other hand, is hundreds of ideas bashed around, screwed up, thrown into the bin, fished out of the bin an hour later and folded up into thick wads and put under the leg of a table to stop it wobbling.  And then the same again for the next line, and the next, and so on, until you have a whole page or the table finally keels over.

Quote the second, which is Adams imagining how he came up with the name of the character Zaphod Beeblebrox (or maybe this is how it really happened, I’m not sure):

I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of a good name for a character.  I old myself that, as a reward, I would let myself go and make a Bovril sandwich once I’d thought of it.

I stared out of the window some more and thought that probably what I really needed to help get the creative juices going was to have a Bovril sandwich now, which presented with a problem that I could only successfully resolve by thinking it over in the bath.

An hour, a bath, three Bovril sandwiches, another bath and a cup of coffee later, I realized that I still hadn’t thought of a good name for a character, and decided that I would try calling him Zaphod Beeblebrox and see if that worked.

I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of something for him to say…

This second quote says two things to me:

One is that writers, like other people, can procrastinate an awful lot when they are trying to work on something.

The second is that sometimes you just need to pick a name, topic, word, phrase out of the blue and just start working with it.  Otherwise, you’re back to the bath and the sandwiches all over again.

Consciously or subconsciously, this little story about the naming of Zaphod Beeblebrox has influenced me tremendously in the small bit of fiction writing that I’ve done.  Here’s an example from the novel that I started over a year ago with some enthusiasm, wrote about 15 pages for, and then locked away in a box, which I think about occasionally, but I’m not sure that I’ll ever complete:

I was trying to think of a name for my protagonist, an accountant (really, a bookkeeper) who was going to have some amazing adventures in a story similar to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  I came up with the name Herbert Muckfeather, which sounded nerdy, odd, and very unlikely for a protagonist’s name.  It wasn’t very good, but at least it helped me keep going.  Later on,  I changed his name to Neil Clerk, which isn’t much better, but, honestly, is just the set up for a dumb joke that would appear later in the novel.  But it IS shorter and easier to remember.

See, if I can come up with a silly little anecdote like this, I bet you have a story that is much, much better.  So if you do (or you don’t, for that matter) have a good writing/naming story like this, why not share it in the comments section?  Please? 

To help keep yourself from panicking, try subscribing to Broadcasting Brain, the ideas should calm you down a bit.

Other posts that you might enjoy reading:

• Phreeooww – 30 Years of Hitchhiking Across The Galaxy
• Just Write Blog Carnival entries
• Why do you blog if not for money?
• The struggles of writing and publishing using the Free Model
• Someone interviewed me for a change and some disclosure