I’ve discussed in the past the idea of your worst ideas actually being your best…but I hear a lot of reluctance towards pursuing an idea that isn’t your absolute favorite. After all, you throw yourself into your work with all the passion and fervor of a crazy person, and it eats up weeks or months of your life, depending on what exactly it is that you’re trying to write. So why bother investing yourself in something that you don’t even think is good?
If you don’t like your idea, that’s not an excuse to dismiss it. An idea you don’t like is a challenge. Because here’s the reality of what happened:
- Your brain felt that the idea warranted some form of generation to begin with.
- For whatever reason, you wrote it down into your big notebook of scrap ideas or in the heat of a fast-paced brainstorm.
An innocent tree died so that you could have the pencil wood to write that stupid thing down! You deserve to honor it! This is where the whole “love” thing comes in. Writing isn’t dating. When you’re dating someone, and you aren’t really enjoying it, it’s probably a good idea to get the hell out of there. You can’t change your lover, and it’ll only hurt to try. Ladies, you’re with me on this one.
You can change your idea. Writing isn’t a “love at first sight” process. You don’t have to start off in love with your shitty idea. In time, you can learn to love it. All you have to do is push past that initial rejection and start to question what it is about it that you don’t like. Is it not grounded enough? Is it about something that doesn’t interest you, or that you don’t know much about? These are fixable problems. You know the old “it’s not you, it’s me” excuse? Take it to heart. It’s not your ideas fault, it’s your own. You came up with it, you can make it work.
Creativity is as much about the experience of creation as it is the experiences that come from the final product. Whatever it is that you don’t like about an idea, use it as a catalyst to learn something new or have a new experience. And if you absolutely can’t get something down on paper, even after giving it the fairest shot in the world, then so be it. But before you push all your “little ideas” aside, remember that you already wrote something and that’s a hell of a lot further than we get on most of our ideas. It would be a shame for it to go to waste.