Use it or lose it: the nomadic idea.

Lately it seems like Elizabeth Gilbert is most recognized as the woman who gave a brilliant TED talk on genius and the role of the muse in an artist’s life. Unless, of course, you refer to her as “the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love.” Then you get a totally different look of understanding, typically an eye roll and a couple of chuckles.

I suppose once Julia Roberts plays you in a film, some are less inclined to take you seriously.

That's where your idea came from... and where it could return to if you don't do something with it. (via Mike Cattell)

Regardless, Gilbert is a very bright woman, talented writer and enthralling speaker. I had the opportunity to hear her speak at the New York Public Library several months ago and she shared her take on where ideas come from. Sit tight: it’s a little looney.

As she highlights in her TED talk, Gilbert believes that ideas are flashes of inspiration that visit us somewhat randomly. Our job, as thinkers (or artists), is to keep showing up to receive said flashes… and when inspiration strikes us in a traffic jam or when we’re plain old busy, the ideas seek another (less busy) home. Sound a little strange?

She went on to provide supporting evidence in the form of a recent situation between Gilbert and her friend, fiction writer, Ann Patchett.

Before she wrote Committed, Gilbert said she was writing a novel based on a middle-aged woman in love with her boss in Minnesota who was working in the Amazon on some sort of medical research. Gilbert had to put aside this novel, as various life obstacles got in her way. She switched gears and wrote Committed. A year or so later, she’s having coffee with Patchett and begs her friend to share the details of her new novel. To both their surprise, Patchett relates a novel with eerily similar details: middle-aged Minnesotan, researching in the Amazon, in love with her older boss.

Amazing! And a perfect confirmation that ideas, when you are not ready for them, seek out new owners.

Patchett’s latest novel, State of Wonder, is this exact book. I heard her give a reading last month and asked for her point of view on the story Gilbert had told. Patchett, the more logical of the two, said that she couldn’t necessarily agree that the ideas were seeking owners, but admitted that it had been very strange indeed.