The world is divided into creators and collectors.  Creators have the ability to conjure up inspiration and bring something new into the world.  There are not many creators.  The rest of us can be collectors.

Fortunately for us the world creates things for us and we get to experience them.  That’s a beautiful life by itself, but for those of us who want to be creative, it also provides us with a diverse supply of themes, ideas, examples, scenarios, characters… that we can put into our collections.  Then we can categorize, analyze, and recombine them into something that is just as uniquely our own as the brand new things that creators create.

Pharmaceutical research is a great analogy.  There are two ways to create a new physical substance for some purpose.  The first is to focus on the purpose and devote resources to try to synthesize something new.  The second is to gather articles existing in nature and see what they do and how they work and try to utilize them in a new way.

The second approach is easier because you are just collecting stuff that already exists.  Plus, the stuff in nature is certain to be better than what can be created now because it has been under development for eternity.  On the other hand, collecting is less focused on any one purpose.  What you wind up with is just what you find.  The best you can do is direct your search.

(Incidentally, arguments for enviornmental conservation based on genetic diversity translate to arguments for cultural conservation to preserve memetic diversity.)

To be a good collector you decide on themes you are interested in and have some feel for.  Then you keep these themes in your mind and you go around your life always looking for specimens that fit your themes.  And you write them down.  (I email myself.)  It is a life of constant awareness, of intense passivity.

How many of us could write great novels?  Almost none of us could sit down now and create a novel.  But all of us have many years left to collect that novel and write it when the collection is complete.  Decide today what your novel is about.