what makes an idea stick

Ideas that connect to your childhood, ideas you have had for ages- these are ideas you are attached to. In an extreme case an artist is welded to some image or experience and this provides the creative energy to keep making works of art. Hence the commonly held idea that a real artist is someone with a damaged childhood...But actually it is simply about finding some personal connection to an idea to make it stick. You need a carrier wave of emotion to make an idea fly. I don't mean sentiment or standardised notions of emotion- I mean the creator's attachment emotion- his baby so to speak. My friend Lloyd Evans the playwrite turns down ideas offered to him all the time. He explains he just won't be motivated to work on something that has no personal connection to him. It being an objectively 'good' idea is just not enough. I feel it is connected to starting from your own home base. Walking from the front door a long distance is always satisfying; so is taking something from your childhood/early life and making it work as an idea. Joseph Beuys was saved in WW2 by being wrapped in felt and fat when he was shot down over Russia. Lots of his art works featured these materials- not because they have any intrinsic interest- it's just that supplied to Beuys the intensity of feeling needed as a carrier wave for what he was making. People buy energy not ideas, if your idea for a book, art object or product is built on something you hold dear then it will magicly be imbued with staying power however you twist it around. You don't have to be arty- you can make a very commercial product from something you held/hold dear. You only have to have some kind of attachment to utilise.