(You can buy this at www.murverse.com/store, you know)
When I was working on my Kickstarter campaign for The Afterlife Series, I researched custom thumb drives in order to release a lot of my content (audiobooks and ebooks) at once. I found that you can get those rubber bracelets that indicate that you should live strong or have courage or WWJD or WWNPHD?
I jumped on this, since a major issue in Wasteland and War is idea addiction and what it can do to you. It was an unsubtle nod to the problems novice writers (including myself) of having so many awesome ideas, you are afraid of your admittedly amateur mind not doing them justice. With that I remind you of several of my rules:
- Ideas are cheap: The more ideas you have, the more ideas will come. I once did an idea-a-day blog, brainstorming every day to give people ideas because I was tired of people hoarding them like diamonds. They’re not precious gems; they’re seeds. Alone, they’re nothing except for bagel toppings, but plant them and nurture them and you’ve got something awesome. I mean, how many incredibly popular (note I didn’t say “good”) stories have come from “young woman – likely powerful in her own right – falls for vampire hundreds of years older than her?” Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sookie Stackhouse stories, and Sunshine (which is the best of them all, and highly recommended) all leap to mind. The idea was not the key to these stories, the execution was.
- You are allowed to suck: If you don’t write your “best” ideas now, what are you going to write in order to get better? If you were an artist, would you try to paint the best thing you could, or would you focus on “happy little trees” until you felt you were good enough for your ideas? Allow yourself to suck, even when writing your great ideas. More will always come and make you feel like you’re “great” idea now was simplistic.
If you don’t allow yourself to accept that ideas are worth the paper you write them on, and don’t allow yourself to suck while executing them, then you will never progress as a writer. Stop idea addiction.
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And don’t you don’t want to get addicted to brain crack!
That is, “You don’t want to get addicted to brain crack!”
No more attempting to post from a “smart” phone.
It’s also worth noting that many of the “great works” of English literature aren’t based on original ideas at all.
Shakespeare, of course, is the most notable example–not a single one of his plays was completely original. The Tempest was the closest he got, and that was vaguely based on a recent news story.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was in large part a rehash of the Decameron.
Milton’s Paradise Lost was a retelling of the first few chapters of Genesis.
Sure, all these writers did add their own elements to the basic stories, but that’s all part of the execution. I guess the flip side of idea addiction is that you don’t NEED a great idea to be a great writer. You don’t have to wait for that perfect idea (“Just gotta get my fix, man! Just one more!”), you just have to keep writing.
[...] is a USB drive bracelet. I looked around her blog and found her musing on it . That really resonated with me. I have been trying to consume less and produce more for years. I [...]