I sometimes wear a necklace with a lightning bolt charm. I was told the lightning bolt was a symbol of inspiration. I thought that was cool. Because inspiration feels like a lightning bolt sometimes, when you’re struck with an excellent idea that you can’t wait to write about. It feels exciting and immediate.
But it’s not about getting the idea, it’s about what you do with the idea that makes the difference.
People have ideas. We see something and it churns around into our brain and BOOM – inspiration. For people wanting to write, we will look at that idea like it is a nugget of gold. The idea is the most important thing. It feels magical and precious, and sometimes it feels too big to hold onto alone, but also too precious to share with others yet.
Writers love a new story idea. Well, this one does, anyway. I can feel the excitement of this new idea coursing through my body. I love thinking about new characters and shaping the scenes that pop into my head.
In the writing community, there are many opinions about how to approach these ideas, and – like most things – they all kind of contradict each other. All I can say is this is usually how I handle it.
I write it down. Because I write everything down. If I don’t write it down, it’ll fade like a strange dream that you can’t wait to tell someone over breakfast but all of a sudden it no longer makes sense. I will find my journal or notebook and I will scribble down the potential idea and see where it takes me. Sometimes it will just live in the notebook as a bit of word salad. Other times it will take shape into characters, structure, dialogue, and look … I’ve written a whole story or outline.
I ask myself whether I have the time for it. Sometimes I am in the middle of writing another project when a cool idea shows up and begs for my attention. Like many others, I suffer from shiny object syndrome as a way to self-sabotage my work. I will get the new sexy idea and decide that maybe I like it better than the old, boring novel I am already working on. Knowing that the new, sexy idea is fleeting and the old, boring novel is already about to move into edits, I will shoo that new idea away. There is a Tom Waits quote in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic where he explains that when these fleeting ideas appear, he’ll tell them to “Go away. Go bother Leonard Cohen.” You don’t have to say yes to every idea.
I put it in the queue. I have a few things in the queue right now: stories stacked up waiting for their turn. In her podcast, artist Lisa Congdon advised that when artists are stuck, they should work on their templates. I thought this was an interesting idea. Because I was stuck at the time. I had the idea but I was struggling with motivation to get it done and the new ideas were knocking on my brain trying to get me to give up on the novel I was writing. So I went to Goodnotes on my tablet and with my stylus created a few mystery-focused fill in the blank pages for myself – detective, victim, crime, fallout, etc. This way when an idea pops up, I have a safe place for it until I can get to it.
I keep it a secret. When people ask me what I am working on, I try to dodge the question. I've learned that when I speak it aloud to another person, I end up assessing their reaction to it and any sign of confusion, disappointment, or dislike will be translated as I have a failure of an idea. Historically writers have said they keep their ideas secret or on a need to know basis because telling people kills the magic. I do not tell people what I am writing until the manuscript is complete.
Some ideas never see the light of day. Not everything will be turned into a story, a poem, or a novel. And I am okay with that. I wrote three novels before I saw my first publication. They live on an old external hard drive. They were what I needed to write at the time to get me to where I am now.
When I started out, I thought I would die if I didn’t see that first novel published. But it never went anywhere and eventually I moved on to other things, better things. I became a better writer, little by little, and now when I think about where I started, I’m glad those didn’t see the light of day beyond my writing partner and husband.
I speak with young writers who tell me they are working on their first novel, and often I will suggest they also work on other short projects in the interim – while they are editing, while they are shopping it to publishers, while they are waiting to be discovered – and they don’t want to. Because the idea they had for this book and the work they put into it is like a monolith of their writing identity. They had the one idea. They are married to that book. They are monogamists with that book. I am encouraging them to have a fling now and then.
However, and I remember that feeling, other ideas will appear and not only are you not being disloyal to the other book by pursuing them when you have time, but it’s actually healthy to explore other ideas for other stories, poems, flash fiction, or future novels. I try not to chase down every shiny object, but sometimes it is necessary to embrace new lightening bolts. Give them a home, pursue them when you have time.
I had a conversation with a writer recently about how most young writers avoid experimenting with the short form because they are accustomed to reading novels, so why wouldn’t they write novels? What everyone – readers and writers – forgets is that novels take a long time. And while the writer is crafting a novel and slowly getting stronger everyday as a writer, working on short pieces in the interim will allow them to experiment with new characters, settings, genres, and language. Consider it’s like cross-training. Sure, you can run a marathon by running everyday, but you’ll get faster if you hit the weights.
I understand the young desire to get things out in the world as quickly as possible. If I possessed any patience, I would probably not be an indie author. But I also know I made the same error over and over again. I wrote a novel, then another, then another, and it wasn’t until I was in my masters program did I attempt to write something that wasn’t the novel I had been working on for years. I took a chance and worked on something new and short. My mentor loved it. I did a reading and the crowd loved it. And eventually, an online magazine loved it and put it on their website for others to read.
Was it the best thing I ever wrote? No. But it created forward momentum in a way that novels do not. A person can write 75,000 words and have those words never see the light of day. And when that happens, when the rejections come in, when the rewrites come in, when the editing – yet again– is requested, a young writer can become defeatist. All that work and nothing might come from it. All their eggs were in that one basket.
A short story can give a writer the necessary dopamine rush of finishing something. It can also be a space where they can try new things, new characters, new structures, new language – a place where they don’t feel the weight of an entire world on their shoulders.
Be sure to check out some of my shorter pieces in the brandibradley.com store!
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