I sit here tonight listening to Gravel Road (which came on randomly…bless the stars), thinking about the inertia of bad ideas.
I read a blog post from Hugh Howey, an accomplished author whose work is good enough that I listen when he talks, about that concept up above: the inertia of bad ideas.
Inertia is the continuing movement an object will make once its been set in motion, even if that act has ceased; its moving on its own, now, because it has mass.
A Bad Idea is one that sucks the life out of a story, and is so easily mistaken for a good idea.
What Hugh so concisely articulated was that there’s a trap in writing: we come up with a bad idea, and then because of intertia, we stick with that bad idea for long enough to have it ruin a story we once loved. We hold onto it, even though it should be let go. And the story suffers because of it. WE suffer because of it.
I’ve fallen into that trap, I’m afraid.
As soon as I read the blog post, I knew it was true. I didn’t want to admit it, but in my gut, I knew it was true. Even intellectually, I knew it was true, because what I was writing still just didn’t feel right.
The ONE thing I’ve learned as a writer with one book out was what it feels like to write something that worked for me. It was good enough. FOR. ME. Something I could put down and say, ‘it’s done.’ That was a threshold I crossed. I know that feeling. It’s a joyous one.
I haven’t felt that with this one aspect of the story I’m writing right now. I have with HALF the story, but not the other half. I’ve felt it in spots, and with some concepts, but not overall.
And, damnit Hugh if it didn’t feel as though you were speaking directly to me when you wrote that blog post.
I need to figure out which of my ideas are good ones, and which are bad ones. And I think I do that by listening to my gut.