The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Ideas

When I was writing short stories, I kept an idea notebook–one of those pocket-sized things that would get all bent from being in my pocket.  Invariably, it would get lost, and I’d have to buy a new one.

Once I’d get the idea, I’d scramble like mad to get it written down RIGHT NOW.  Because if I didn’t get it down RIGHT NOW, I’d forget it.

Never occurred to me that if I forgot it then maybe it was worth forgetting.

When it came to the writing, the same thing happened.  I had to jump on the story RIGHT NOW to not lose the momentum of the idea.  A paragraph, a page, two pages, five pages later, story is dead.  And I’d be jumping on another idea and repeating the same process.

When I cleaned out my files a couple of years ago, I found quite a few unfinished projects.  And then I found my idea notebooks.  About four or five of them, all full of these ideas.  Even reading them many years afterwards, I felt the spark of all these ideas.  I could see why they excited me, but I could also see why didn’t go anywhere.

They were what I call “flash in the pan” ideas.  They’re ideas that, on first thought, sound absolutely like the greatest thing in the world.  They demand to be written right now.  And they burn out, sometimes pretty fast.  I had a lot of stories where I had only one paragraph, and then the idea fizzled.

But the ideas for stories that I wrote and finished were always ones that stayed with me.  They stuck in my mind and fermented until they were ready.  The idea for MAGIC STUD is, in fact, more than twenty years old.  And what I have today is also nothing like the original idea.

What’s interesting to note is that those flash in the pan ideas I found in the notebooks–I thought they might have merit so I typed them up in a Word document and tossed the notebooks.  But I didn’t back it up, and I lost them when my hard drive failed. 

I don’t remember a single one from the list.

Perhaps it’s better than way.

Getting Ideas

Continuing from the interview with M.J. Fredrick on the I Do Not Want to Wait, I Want the Book Now blog.  It’s a series of questions not just about the book, but about how she writes and where she gets ideas.

She had this to say on ideas:

Everywhere! I’ve gotten a couple from dreams, from stories we read in class, articles I see on the internet….everywhere. I wish I had all the time to write all the ideas in my head!

This is a pretty standard response. When I first started a book many years ago, this particuar piece of advice drove me crazy.  Ideas weren’t everywhere!  In fact, it seemed like they were hiding.  The ideas were few and far between.

But what I also didn’t do was brainstorm them out; I waited for them to come.  I did keep an “idea notebook” that I carried around (ended up with about five of them because they invariably got lost for a while) to record “inspiration.”  Many years later, I looked through those and saw how they excited me, but also that they weren’t enough to generate a story.

Now I think of ideas as something different.  I might have one or several that inspires the story, then there are various other ones that pop up throughout that inspire a scene or a bit of characterization.  There was an article in the Washington Post a few days ago on how celebrities pose for pictures.  That lends itself to an idea for something in a scene.  I guess maybe when I was having so much trouble coming up with them, I was thinking that the whole story was resting on the idea–not that a book might be made up of many different ideas.

An Idea is Not an Invention

The publishing industry is a strange animal.  There’s aspects of that are in the rest of the business industry, but don’t work the same way in publishing.

For example, take The Idea.

In the business world …

Let’s suppose you have an idea for a new invention.  The Idea is worth money in the business world.  It can be worth so much money that it’s often important to go out and get it patented right away before someone steals it. 

Plus, with so many new inventions, coming up with something that hasn’t been done before is hard.

In the publishing world …

The Idea isn’t worth much.  You can wave a flag and say “This is a great idea!  It’ll be a best selling novel!”  But until that novel gets on a paper in a well-written story that people want to buy, a agent isn’t going to be interested.  And even then, if the agent likes the story, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a publisher–or the readers will.

And anyone can come up with the idea.  It’s pretty easy to do.  Easier than coming up with an idea for an invention.  But again, it doesn’t mean anything without the actual writing.

I’ve Got This Idea …

Someone recently found out I was a writer and tried to pitch an idea to me.  He thought it was a great idea and a sure best seller, but guess who he wanted to do all the work?

Anyone can come up with an idea.

But not everyone can turn a good idea into a fantastic story.

Nor can everyone turn that fantastic story into a finished novel. 

That’s the hard part.  Even some of the famous writers you’ve read have had trouble finding a home for the books they’ve written.  Steve Berry wrote ten books before he hooked a publisher with one.  So did J.A. Konrath. 

Ideas = easy.

Writing = hard.

Otherwise everyone who came up with a great idea would be published.