Dead Souls, Star Wars And Scheherazade

I think his soul just died a little.

My friend, Howard Tayler was describing overhearing an author answer the question “Where do you get your ideas?”

Today marks the one thousand and first blog post on www.staging.rodneymbliss.com. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! I’m continually amazed that these scribblings resonate with people.

I’ve been thinking about his particular blog entry for months. I always intended to use this post to talk about “Where do ideas come from.” But, then life interfened.

On Friday, I went to see the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One for free. I only needed to sit through a “short presentation.” Have you ever been offered a “3 days, 2 nights vacation” in some exciting sounding location if you were willing to sit through a “short presentation”? Did you go? Are you now the proud owner of a timeshare condo?

I was struck how both Maxta (the company that sponsered the movie on Friday) and timeshare companies use the same tactics. In one case, I’m happy to sit through the presentation. (It was actually interesting and I’m going to follow up with the company about a more indepth demo of hyperconvergence.) In the other, you have to endure the presentation and more than once think, “Is a couple of days in Vegas really worth this?”

I thought this would be an excellent topic to explore in more depth in a blog entry.

I attended this movie with my friend Howard. It’s a business meeting for him. He writes movie reviews. (His Rogue One review is here. It contains zero spoilers.) A year ago I wrote a series of posts about Howard and his comic Schlock Mercenary. It contains my all time most popular blog post. “New Maxims Revealed for the First Time.” I thought how it would be great to write a follow-up to that article since Howard has now released all 70 maxims.

In fact, the 70 maxims are going to be published in a dead-tree edition. He let me hold a copy of the dead-tree edition. It was gorgeous. I thought about how it would be an excellent topic to cover here. He even provided a story “hook.” In the front of a book that belongs to him and was written and published by him, in blue pen he wrote

This book is the property of Howard Tayler

It ties perfectly into the idea that he’s publishing a version of the book that is full of handwritten notes.

Scheherazade was the original blogger. “1001 Arabian Nights” is a collection of stories, including the story of Alladin, that Scheherazade tells Shahryar, the king each night so that he won’t kill her in the morning. She tells 1001 stories before the king finally agrees to spare her life.

As I think of coming up with a new entry tomorrow, I’m reminded of Scheherazade. She claimed, after 1001 nights that she had “run out of stories.” I don’t know that I’m a good enough storyteller that I could tell an engaging story that would spare my life, but Scheherazade illustrates a problem that everyone who creates content daily has to deal with,

Where do you come up with your ideas?

I think Howard described the author as “dying a little” because the answer is “Where don’t you get ideas from?”

When I started writing this blog three years ago, I kept a list of topics, “In case I ran out of ideas.” As I got better, and wrote more, I referred to my list less and less. I still write things down, but not because I’m afraid of not having enough ideas, but because I’m afraid I won’t remember all the ones that come up during the day.

Today, is a perfect illustration. I have too many ideas for a single day.

Ideas are where you find them. You only need to look.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren. 

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