Mining Ideas

MUSIC: Devo

I heard a thought in a podcast last week about the need for companies to generate that “One Big Idea”. And it was stated that there is no such thing. Companies should generate many “Little Ideas”. I think that the same mentality should be applied to writing. I have yet to come out with “The Big Bestseller” piece of writing. And that is all right. So right now I have been just writing smaller things. Like blog postings. The goal is to exercise the “writing muscle”. I need to keep at it to build up to bigger pieces. So I have been just writing down ideas and thoughts lately. I may take these thoughts and build them into something bigger at a later time. It is better to write them down because I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to keep the ideas in my head only to forget them. It feels bad than I may have forgotten the idea for good. And to be a bit egotistical for a moment let me say they were “Damn Good”. I consider them to be a warm up for a possible first draft. And as I said in another post that I do not talk about them in the first draft phase. But I will give you a hint. I had ideas for 2 science fiction type stories and one about a tavern. And please do not ask about the “what and why” about these ideas I had. And I am also not taking anyone’s input at this time on them either. These ideas may lead to something in the future. And then again they may not. I will not know for sure until I go “mining” into them.

Generating ideas is a never ending process. Sometimes I see a picture and want to write a few sentences about it. I may hear a song that invokes images that tells a story. Or I am cutting articles out of newspapers that caught my attention. Sometimes the ideas work out and sometimes there is not as much as I thought with the idea. There is no way to deal with “Too Many Ideas Syndrome”. It makes you more “honest” when it comes to ideas. Remember the saying, “You cannot polish a turd”. To get an idea of how the process goes listen to Act 1 of Tough Room from the This American Life website.

I think that is why calling my blog here “Some Assembly Required” really fits as a title. It is about the ideas I have and the process of putting them together. It is about the process of writing to put them out there. I hope this triggers some thought in the readers out there. Which I hope someday will turn into feedback. And go from there with even more thoughts and better writing to produce even more.

On another note, I wish I could be better at detecting those damn typo errors. I swear I check for them before posting. And yet they still pop up.

Another thing I want to mention here. As I have said in previous posts that I listen to a lot of various podcasts. I found another from WFMU website. It is called The Dusty Show. The host Clay Pigeon (what a cool radio name) goes around NYC area interviewing people on the street. It is all random who he talks to. Listening to this is another way for me to gain some insight into people to help write “real” characters. The other part, I like is that he asks questions to get conversation. He is not in people’s face and he seems like he really is listening to responses. This is quite the opposite of too many talk shows on the airwaves today. I like that he does not try to angle in some personal agenda. This has become another source for ideas to “mine” into writing.