Don’t Talk an Idea to Death

The Trouble With Ideas

The trouble with ideas is that they are ephemeral. Just energy. They land magically and can fly away just as easily. Formulating them in your mind creates a sort of "creative tension.” Sharing them, telling them, repeating them over and over again to others dissipates the tension. Suddenly your new idea has lost its energy. And you’ve lost your excitement. I've found that if I tell a brand new idea too soon I somehow deflate this new tension and lose the steam for creating. 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 find the system that works for you 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. 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 as you grow it.

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