Your ideas: handle with care

During one of my English classes, the professor brought up a writer’s tendency to become so enthusiastic about an idea or concept that he or she has that he absolutely has to share it.  He then explained how, more often than not, by sharing the idea in detail you are essentially letting it go too soon.  How it is essential to keep that idea inside, and to nurture, or “mother it,” as he put it.  He’s right, and this got me thinking: how, exactly, can one nurture and, well, “mother” an idea properly in order for it to “grow up” and reach its full potential?  Let us explore the possibilities as to how writers can properly nurture their ideas.

Let’s start with the beginning of the process.  You have an idea, an idea that you believe is so phenomenally new and exciting that people’s eyes will explode from their heads upon reading it.  Naturally, you want to share it with the world.  What do you do?  Grab your cell phone, open up your e-mail, or open your mouth to tell the nearest person, right?  Most writers I know, and I, am guilty of doing exactly that.  Fight that urge.  Keep the idea inside.  Think of it as keeping your idea safe from the outside dangers that could kill it before it reaches its prime.  It’s sort of like the process of wallpapering your house with Mr. Yuck stickers and effectively blocking every available outlet with those plastic outlet plugs (very technical terminology here, people).

First off, hold onto that idea until you can get it down somewhere.  If you’re the kind of writer who likes carrying a notebook on your person, get to it.  Otherwise, keep it in the back of your mind, but not so far to the back that something like the ever-important decision of what fine dining establishment will be delivering your dinner boots it out of your thoughts completely.  When the opportunity presents itself, get the idea down on something.  If that something is a digital medium such as an MS Word document, be sure to make a back-up copy.  Label it as something you will remember, so as it doesn’t get mistakenly deleted.

There is a distinct difference between going around and talking about an idea and getting help for that idea.  It’s so clear, in fact, that it almost doesn’t bear mentioning.  For the sake of covering everything, however, I feel I should elaborate.  It’s a necessary evil to occasionally seek out help during the writing process.  Whether that help is simply the proofreading of a work or running an experimental something-or-other past another writer, the need to ask for help will invariably rear its ugly head.  That’s okay; nobody’s perfect.  What you’ll want to avoid is outlining the entire plot of your story, the entire overview of your article, or whatever the piece of writing may be.  What you’ll end up doing is letting that idea loose into the wild where it, under-developed, will wander out into the busy streets and get hit by a car.  I’ve never been one for metaphors and the likes, but I think the picture is pretty clear: by sharing your idea, in excessive details, you are letting it go before you should.  Even in seeking help, it doesn’t hurt to be careful in exactly what details you give away and what ones you hold onto.

Now that your idea is safe and sound, the process of taking care of it comes into play.  This is where individual writing styles will determine what happens next.  I, for example, will sit down and make sure I work on the idea until I can’t think of anything else to type, or some outside influence demands I stop.  Say, for example, if the power goes out.  I’m the kind of person who takes an idea, throws additional details that I feel will help the idea onto it, and then cleans it up until I have what I feel is a relatively well-polished work.  Some writers prefer outlining, others jump right into the writing and fix it up from there, like I do.  Regardless of how you write, it’s always a good idea to, and please pardon the cliche, strike while the iron is hot.  It will ensure that none of the juicy details are lost along the way, like how the protagonist’s love interest in your tragedy is really his (female relation goes here), from the future.  Ridiculous example aside, the point remains: the sooner you begin to work on the idea instead of letting it sit and wait in your mind, like some sad, lonely leftovers in the back of the fridge (at least your idea, unlike those leftovers, will not grow green fuzz and begin to stink up the place, though).

Once your idea has started to develop–it’s started to walk on its own, it’s been potty-trained and all that good stuff–and has really begun taking shape, it’s usually a good idea to keep up with it regularly.  This step depends heavily upon the size of the project for which the idea was intended.  If it’s something shorter, like an article for a magazine or a poem, it will take a lot less time to work on than a novel would.  It’s not necessary to set up a schedule for keeping up with your idea, but just be sure to keep taking care of it.  Plenty of ideas die simply from neglect, and the numerous half-finished, half-assed stories saved on this computer, as well as a few of my others, act as proof of that.  Remember that going back and editing your work during the writing process is a sure-fire way to bring any idea, regardless of its potential, to an abrupt end.

With the proper love and care, a fully nurtured idea can go on and become something great, whether it’s just something for your friends and family to read or an article slated to be published in a major publication.  It’s all a matter of holding onto your idea and making sure it doesn’t bite the dust before it sees the light of day.  So, to once again echo the advice of my professor, nurture your ideas and, of course, enjoy helping those ideas reach their full potential.

~ by crazedpenguin on January 25, 2009.