Idea Factory

There are times where I wish I could just pound out lists and lists of my ideas, that I could just be content to know I'm an influencer and let them roam free. Yet, alas, I cannot trust it and I hoard it like filthy, dirty treasure.

MY treasure

Influencers often monetize their ability to collect followers (and thereby justifying the ridiculous amount of time they spend on social media). Nothing wrong with that, but it is more like aggressive and often insincere consumerism. I wouldn't say that influencers are below integrity either-- I'm sure many will only influence something they believe in, yet with all rises in success, the temptation would also exist to lower their standards to collect on things they don't really care about. The creator in me just can't be satisfied with this passivity towards the production either way.

It's important to me that my ideas do go through some creative control. Maybe it's the obsession with being first. I don't want to be the sharing type only to decide I want to do it, yet they beat me to it. Then suddenly I look like the copycat, the fanfic hack, and the idea slams my heart into my feet. Perhaps it's possible to be an influencer and an author, but no matter how I think about it, it seems like a cycle too open to paranoia, wondering which idea I should have kept or released to the sharks.

MY tail

Having already touched on the writers that seem to want their book written for them and people who pretend to have an idea but are really farming, I won't do that again, but ideas are still, at least in the sense of the creative process, somewhat precious. (No. No Gollum picture here!) While some people get excited by an idea they can borrow or steal to carry their scene, more often than not, I find it too influential, too tragic a miss in working out the problem in a unique way (if not unique, at least organic to my own critical thought process).

In a previous post, I brought up impostor syndrome. If you're not hip to this, it's a condition that gives you the sense that your accomplishments are fraudulent, even when they are valid. Because I run into this feeling more than I'd like to admit, I try to avoid any practice that might give the negative loop grounds for feeling like a thief, a hack, a fraud. I do have an ample history with fantasy as is and often I can pinpoint some of my plots as being derivative, but I keep those influences as far from vivid as possible. I know those sorts of people who almost exclusively copy-paste or take credit for other people's work and have no shame for it. To me, it's disgusting. You won't often see a heavy bias from me, but this is one I'm unbending on.

It's not lost on me, the irony being these people almost never get a taste of impostor syndrome.

Maybe there will be a lot of my ideas lost when my life comes to a close. It's a shame, but I've never asked much from this life and ideas are one place where I tread carefully. I love to share methods, techniques, slices of life, mood management practices, fitness updates, patterns, but the times when I hoard ideas or put a price on them-- please believe that this is where artists need to assert the value of their contribution. We do give a lot away for free. I've shared crochet patterns I've made from scratch, short stories, pictures-- many of them even of quality I should be charging for. It doesn't always make perfect sense what I choose to make free and what I insist contributes to my wallet. Because so many artists do make stunning works available free, there's almost an expectation, an entitlement that something comparably better is free so yours should be too.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Look at all the free books!

Also, MY books.

The idea that only the best should be allowed to have value is a falsehood. A free market doesn't mean nothing has value. It gives the consumer the ability to discern what to consume and the producer to decide what its worth. They often do put things out there, simply out of the need to share, their own measure of what might give them exposure and sell more of their work, but it doesn't exist to give consumers permission to undercut the value of all art. You are perfectly within your right to decide it's not worth your hard-earned money, but you are not within your right to decide its value. And yes, piracy will murder some dreams, and it will always be a problem. Your ideas exist in some form already. Your sense of humor is even dependent on someone else's ability to enjoy it (and you can just as well be the only one to enjoy it-- go, you!).

Everything is trash, everything is treasure, and you don't have to be right about which way that leans for you.

FYI: Treasure. You don't have to agree. You don't have to understand why I spent months bingeing on Homestar Runner games and toons. Strongbad, King of Town... Still my spiritual BFFs. Also, where I learned the word 'chiaroscuro'.

You've probably noticed, but I find popular authors game for examples, both positive and negative. The main reason for this is that is that their success no longer hinges on anything short of massive boycotting. Which never happens. You can hate Seeetepheeniee Meyeeer and E.L. Fudge all you want, but lack of taste will sustain them forever. Authors like Anne Rice, Stephen King, JK Rowling-- they're safely out of reach. It's much trickier either being positive or negative about the rest of us peons because I neither want to seem suspiciously undercritical nor do I have a desire to be the weed in their garden (or the wildfire-- some analogy for killing their career). When I do find time to read their work, sometimes I don't want to immediately be the critic. Sometimes I do enjoy being the consumer.

And sure, writers are SUPPOSED to look at everything with a writer's eye. We're supposed to do a lot of things, but I find most of them to be pretentious and counterproductive if you take them as gospel. Yes, take a little advice concerning the growth and cultivation of ideas, but you're doing yourself a favor sometimes just by not taking every aspect of it and turning it into work. Look, you're in a creative career. It's still about conveying emotion and passion. It's not all or nothing and your work benefits most from the balance-- be a passionate emotional person with a sharp rational brain.

I know creatives get a bad rap for being flighty and irrational. I can't tell you how relieved I am that this is totally wannabe bullshit. I ran into so many try-hard hipsters that talked a big game and produced jackshit. The productive artists, digital artists especially, are people who work with computers, technology, numbers and logic too. Some of us are ridiculously literal, critical, intolerant, stubborn. There's no political barrier either-- a mix of liberal, moderate and conservatives in many degrees. Because of this, creatives also don't have a 'type'. It's sort of just human nature to notice the loudest try-hards of any stereotype.

Kicking my ass back onto the main track though...

He's going to kick my butt.

No matter how you feel about ideas, I can always recommend plastering your existence with them. I have several apps on my tablets and computers, emails to myself, notebooks, post-its, scribbled and typed remnants of the big and small processes of ideas. Get them out. You may have a project in mind, or just want to put out the pieces that may lead to one. It doesn't really matter. Catharsis comes from release. Even when you're blocked, sometimes you're still feeding some beast that probably needs attention. Some people fear that they'll just end up starting and not finishing too much so they do nothing if not the big project. This is why I designate specific programs, ones I give myself permission to treat as generic. Sometimes, it does lead to ideas for the main project(s), but the point of an idea phase is to free it into being. Not to completion, but to some visual or tangible medium.

Which is why many idea-makers are still traditional. Pen and paper is still a good way to cheat yourself into a sense of making something, a boost in the right direction. It turns a secret into a promise, a promise into a project.

I've said this before too, but word count is trivial. While I've had spells where word count was the goal, it was only something I allowed myself if I was certain that the story was planned well enough or simple enough to be pantsed. Produce ideas first, worry about categorizing them when the need presents. Preparation is a good thing, but sometimes you do need to throw a few logs on the fire to shed some light on what comes next.

I'm going to wander off a bit since I've finished covering the branches of this topic for now. I do want to say that, despite the amount of time I spend blogging, I also spend gobs of time writing and planning and editing. I try to put update posts up so you can see accurate progression towards my projects. There are some slower spells where... well, ideas. Outlines. Planning. The word count is a nice little package, but it hardly delves into the process of accumulating it. It's not a mark of confidence. People do attach bragging rights to it and it IS exciting, but it's not the greatest measure of your effort. Connecting your ideas will be the silent victor and one that you work to share eventually.

Happy manufacturing, my word engineers!