So a funny thing happened to me today that I just couldn't help but share with you all this evening. As many of you know, I just put the final touches on my second novel, By Design, a few days ago. Since that time I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a great idea for a blog post.
That was on Thursday.
I've been playing with a bunch of different ideas for some form of post today and up until a few hours ago, I still had nothing. One of the tough parts about being a writer in any shape, form, or fashion is when the dreaded demon of writer's block shows it's ugly head and your ability to put words to paper is suddenly limited to dirty limericks and recycled 'your mama' jokes. It's even worse when the normal measure of your talent as a writer is not much than that and a few decades worth of random sci-fi references rinsed through a pair of your dad's old black over-the-calf dress socks with several mason jars full of Percy Flower's finest. (For those of you not from Johnston County, that means moonshine you silly city kid.) The fog finally lifted, however, when I started thinking about next steps and what my next project was going to look like. That's when it occurred to me.
The subject for today's post is the unused idea.
As a writer, author, scribbler, whatever you wanna call it, ideas become your bread and butter. Sometimes you may get one a week, sometimes you'll get so many in a day you can't possibly write them down fast enough. That's one of the main reasons, aside from the sheer audacity and pretention of appearing to be a writer of some merit, that most of us have a pen and paper somewhere near our person at all times. That's also one of the main reasons most of us talk to ourselves, but I digress. If you were to take the time to inventory the contents of my hard drive, Dropbox folders, file cabinet, and truck you would find dozens of notebooks, reams of files, and megabytes of ideas, partially written pieces, and just various writer brain shit.
So what happens to all that good stuff, you may ask. Herein lies the problem. I think I may have stumbled upon the difference between an active writer who is trying to produce new work on a regular basis and the average hack who says they write but can barely sign their own name: what happens to their, for lack of a better phrase, brain droppings. (Posthumous thanks to the late great George Carlin as always.) I am an omega level dweeb when it comes to old junk I wrote back before I started to grow ear and back hair because I swear that's when I had some of the best ideas of my life. Granted I was in my early twenties and thought I was going to write a vampire novel but hey, if ya don't screw up ya can't learn nothing! I love finding old notebooks or old college writing assignments because some of those ideas or even some of the odd turns of phrase I find within them are actually worthwhile. Granted some make me want to throw up in my own shorts, but that's another story. A side note to all of you early twenty-something scribblers out there who subject yourself to this blog: love letters are NEVER a good idea, whether you write them with the intention of giving them to someone or just to get it off your chest. You will find them twenty years later and want to rip off your own toenails as punishment. Just don't do it. Say I love you with intercourse and faked orgasms like normal people do, for the love of all that's holy. Please I'm begging you.
Now what about the hacks, you ask? What happens to their stuff?
Abso-fraking-lutely nothing. Not a glory hole puckering thing. And that is a damn shame.
If you'll remember a few weeks back, I wrote about a young writer who had a brilliant character idea. If I remember correctly, I even said that this idea was so brilliant that I would watch a movie based on that character if it was written in crayon. Well, I got the chance to talk to this kid about his idea again this weekend. Guess how much work has since gone into that project... Go ahead I'll wait... Exactly NONE! This kid is sitting on sheer brilliance with no real intention to move forward on it. I swear to you I wanted to shake the doucheburger. I swear if I was single, younger, and somehow prettier I'd seduce his girlfriend just to punish the guy. Am I saying it's not his right to do with his idea as he sees fit? Absolutely! What good is genius if you don't do something with it?
What I find the most frustrating about this guy's lack of motivation with his creation is that he's not the only one of his ilk out there. I've had the priviledge of meeting a lot of independant / self-published writers over the course of the last year of widely varying levels of talent and experience. The good ones fight with the need for inspiration and great ideas constantly. The ones that aren't currently and may never be worth a shit wallow in the same old stuff day in and day out with no drive to move forward. I recently heard someone admit that she had an awesome idea that she's sat on for five years just because she didn't have someone else to write it for her. Oh-what-the-hell just didn't quite seem to cover that one for me, you know?
Why does the obviously staggering pile of unused literary genius in the world bother me so badly? It's really simple, actually. All of us, every single one of us, have complained at one point or another about a lack of original creative thought in this world. When are they going to make an original movie again? Why can I predict the plot of most tv shows? Why is every book lately some f'd up vampire retread wanting to be Twilight or handcuff novel wanting to be Fifty Shades of something or other. The fact is that it is out there, sitting dormant on someone's shelf or hard drive, gathering dust or cyber critters, never to see the light of day.
The simple truth to all of this is that sometimes our old ideas really are some of our best ones. I know of writers who are literally at this moment digging through their old bone collections as it were to mine for inspiration and new material. Sadly for every one of those folks, I know of five others who are sitting on material that they think is too tough or too rough or too whatever to continue to work on or even start on in the first place. To those kiddies all I can say is this: the first sentence is always the hardest and all you have to do is try.
If you need more platitudes than that, well, read someone else's blog. I'm fresh out.
Now get off your collective asses and get to work being brilliant damn it!
So what happens to all that good stuff, you may ask. Herein lies the problem. I think I may have stumbled upon the difference between an active writer who is trying to produce new work on a regular basis and the average hack who says they write but can barely sign their own name: what happens to their, for lack of a better phrase, brain droppings. (Posthumous thanks to the late great George Carlin as always.) I am an omega level dweeb when it comes to old junk I wrote back before I started to grow ear and back hair because I swear that's when I had some of the best ideas of my life. Granted I was in my early twenties and thought I was going to write a vampire novel but hey, if ya don't screw up ya can't learn nothing! I love finding old notebooks or old college writing assignments because some of those ideas or even some of the odd turns of phrase I find within them are actually worthwhile. Granted some make me want to throw up in my own shorts, but that's another story. A side note to all of you early twenty-something scribblers out there who subject yourself to this blog: love letters are NEVER a good idea, whether you write them with the intention of giving them to someone or just to get it off your chest. You will find them twenty years later and want to rip off your own toenails as punishment. Just don't do it. Say I love you with intercourse and faked orgasms like normal people do, for the love of all that's holy. Please I'm begging you.
Now what about the hacks, you ask? What happens to their stuff?
Abso-fraking-lutely nothing. Not a glory hole puckering thing. And that is a damn shame.
If you'll remember a few weeks back, I wrote about a young writer who had a brilliant character idea. If I remember correctly, I even said that this idea was so brilliant that I would watch a movie based on that character if it was written in crayon. Well, I got the chance to talk to this kid about his idea again this weekend. Guess how much work has since gone into that project... Go ahead I'll wait... Exactly NONE! This kid is sitting on sheer brilliance with no real intention to move forward on it. I swear to you I wanted to shake the doucheburger. I swear if I was single, younger, and somehow prettier I'd seduce his girlfriend just to punish the guy. Am I saying it's not his right to do with his idea as he sees fit? Absolutely! What good is genius if you don't do something with it?
What I find the most frustrating about this guy's lack of motivation with his creation is that he's not the only one of his ilk out there. I've had the priviledge of meeting a lot of independant / self-published writers over the course of the last year of widely varying levels of talent and experience. The good ones fight with the need for inspiration and great ideas constantly. The ones that aren't currently and may never be worth a shit wallow in the same old stuff day in and day out with no drive to move forward. I recently heard someone admit that she had an awesome idea that she's sat on for five years just because she didn't have someone else to write it for her. Oh-what-the-hell just didn't quite seem to cover that one for me, you know?
Why does the obviously staggering pile of unused literary genius in the world bother me so badly? It's really simple, actually. All of us, every single one of us, have complained at one point or another about a lack of original creative thought in this world. When are they going to make an original movie again? Why can I predict the plot of most tv shows? Why is every book lately some f'd up vampire retread wanting to be Twilight or handcuff novel wanting to be Fifty Shades of something or other. The fact is that it is out there, sitting dormant on someone's shelf or hard drive, gathering dust or cyber critters, never to see the light of day.
The simple truth to all of this is that sometimes our old ideas really are some of our best ones. I know of writers who are literally at this moment digging through their old bone collections as it were to mine for inspiration and new material. Sadly for every one of those folks, I know of five others who are sitting on material that they think is too tough or too rough or too whatever to continue to work on or even start on in the first place. To those kiddies all I can say is this: the first sentence is always the hardest and all you have to do is try.
If you need more platitudes than that, well, read someone else's blog. I'm fresh out.
Now get off your collective asses and get to work being brilliant damn it!
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