Don’t Talk an Idea to Death

The Trouble With Ideas

The trouble with ideas is that they are ephemeral. Energy that lands magically and can fly away just as easily. Formulating them in your mind creates a sort of "creative tension” until you do something with them. Sharing them, telling them, repeating them over and over again to others dissipates the tension. Suddenly your new idea has lost its energy. You get bored with it, you’ve lost your excitement. It took me a while to figure out it wasn’t the idea that I’d lost interest in, but rather some aspect of the energy had been diminished by my repeated telling.

The trick is to bottle the lightning. Some writers throw first thoughts down on paper, others dictate audio notes and transcribe later, others will write out a few finished pages. But the common denominator here is that they are written down, not spoken, not shared. They’re still ‘alive’, waiting to be completed. Writing does not dissipate the energy. It bottles it.

Discover what works for you so you can keep the energy to yourself. Create the structure that "holds" the energy. You want to be able to return to it time and again until you complete it. That is the proper way to dissipate the energy, finish the story.

Create a system to hold your ideas and don’t share them until you’ve bottled the lightning.