A Question About My Challenge…
“Am I Running Out of Ideas?”
That was the question and it is a good question if you believe in all the myths of fiction writing, as we all do and did in our early days.
For me, just to be clear…
- I never write down ideas. I mostly just ignore them.
- I never know what I am going to write ahead of time. I sometimes don’t know until the end of the story.
- I finish all stories I start.
- I use a trigger like a title of a phrase or image of a character to start my stories.
- I write stories only for myself and no one else.
And no, I am not running out of ideas, whatever that means. My creative voice is more raring to go now that I am writing more than when I am only writing occasionally.
The front part of my brain, the one that thinks up “ideas” is never involved in the writing. Never. And no way in hell am I smart enough to front-brain-think of some of the stories I am writing.
So the question is a good one for a certain stage of writer. But to be honest, I haven’t had an “idea” outside of the process of writing a story in decades and decades. So thankfully for me, my well if “ideas” for stories dried up thirty or more years ago.
But since them I’ve written close to 40 million words of fiction that sells.
If you are still waiting around for ideas to hit you, or working on developing an idea or a world before you start writing, you really need to toss all that in a dumpster along with that myth and just go write stories for yourself and have fun.
5 Comments
Brad D. Sibbersen
I have several notebooks full of ideas for stories/characters/witty exchanges that I’ve written down over the years and I’m fairly certain I’ll never use any of them.
dwsmith
I’ve got 50 plus big notebooks full of all that myself. It was a great way to get the front brain stupid ideas out of my head because once they were written down, they vanished. But at the time I thought it critically important. (grin) Never used a one from those notebooks.
Glyn
Well said, Dean.
I enjoy telling stories, that’s all.
Up to now, I have written nearly 1.2 million words with 1.1 self published.
I have my readers and I’m proud of what I have achieved. So is my other half.
dwsmith
Start using the term “indie published” Glyn. You have an independent business. Indie is also a term in music and films that fits exactly what we are doing. In fact, indie films won Oscars this year in top catagories.
We are indie publishing, never self publishing.
Kerridwen Mangala McNamara
I love that you talk about these things.
It’s frustrating to be a supportive writer friend to people who think it should be hard… and to see all the memes and stuff out there about how painful writing is.
Thank you!