I recently read incredibly wise advice from artist Jessica Abel on “idea debt.” In a nutshell, it means spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about your dream project rather than making that project—a process that becomes crippling over time.
Similarly, Benjamin Percy recently wrote at Glimmer Train about how writers can be like “misers with their money” when it comes to ideas—and how ultimately that behavior can prevent you from producing great work. Once he was willing to go “all in” and not hold back (for fear of emptying the well), he produced a great piece of work that made him stop any form of rationing:
The writer is always a careful observer, but if you are constantly evacuating your imagination, your eyes and ears grow even sharper, and you lean forward with hunger for every experience, knowing that it will offer up a card to add to your hand.
Also this month at Glimmer Train:
- Mozart Had a Mother-in-Law by Taiyaba Husain
- Scraps by Trevor Crown
- On Editing by Karen Outen
- Show Me a List by Aaron Gwyn
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
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Very interesting article here. I’ve found a common “pathological” pattern that writers have. Where they kind of hoard their ideas in their head for extended periods of time. Some of those ideas, viable or not, never see the light of day. Ann Janzer in her book the Writing Process, calls this the incubation period. Where you consider and ponder upon your ideas until the next phase. But sometimes the next phase never comes! Recently I heard some writers had ideas stuck in their heads for over a decade. There’s some kind of resistance across the “membrane” of imagination to the page. Coming up with ideas is not the problem. It’s getting them out of our heads.
[…] Writers can be like misers with their money when it comes to ideas—and ultimately that behavior can prevent you from producing great work. […]
My experience is the opposite of this. I have so many ideas that the challenge becomes how to execute them all. There is only one solution and that is to execute one idea at a time. This can feel frustrating in the short run because what about all of the other ideas that are not being actualized? But the greater results can be seen in the rear view mirror, and if I can remember that, then I can focus on the projects on hand today.
This is how I differ from the author of a series. (I mean no offense to them when I say that, because there are several series I enjoy reading.) When I finish writing a novel, my vault is empty. Stone cold bare. There’s nothing, not even a scrap of an idea. Then I have to go live for a while until the act of living gives me more stuff to write about.
[…] Do You Lock Your Best Ideas in a Vault? by @janefriedman […]
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[…] You Lock Your Best Ideas in a Vault? (Benjamin Percy for JaneFriedman.com/Glimmer Train): “For every story or essay or poem you write, you withdraw one image, two characters, maybe […]