Journal Entry

You want to what?

January 30th 2008 at 8:55 am

In the email last night:

Dear Tobias my name is -redacted- and i am trying to sell some of my book
ideas to some author’s, i have worked on 2 idea’s for a couple of mounth’s
one that you might like…

To which I replied:

Dear -redacted-

Authors don’t need to buy ideas. The ideas are the easy part. Writing the whole book, that’s where all the work is.

Best,

Tobias

To further add, this is a common misconception by people who are just getting started or who don’t much about writing. That the idea is everything. The idea is important, don’t get me wrong. But the execution is far more important, and it’s where the men get separated from the boys, so to speak.

Because it’s in the execution that *work* happens.

It’s why the silly romanticized idea of the writer by those who don’t know better of being struck by inspiration and then turning in something awesome is somewhat silly.

Yes, there’s inspiration. That’s the ‘aha’ moment that gets you to commit to writing the piece.

But then you have to sit your ass down in a chair for months on end, and that heady rush of inspiration seems a long way away.

I recently told a student that just about every author I know begins to face despair and torment at about 100 pages or so into the novel, as Maureen McHugh demonstrates in this picture of the stages of writing a novel.

Yeah, there’s a dark night of despair in there.

And that is why, when people want to sell me an idea, or co-write a book (which reads as: I have this idea, do all my work for me and we’ll split the pay. To which I respond, why don’t I use one of my already existing ideas, and get ALL the pay) I have to just laugh because they’re the easy part. Ideas? I have notebooks filled with ideas. I have a whole folder called ‘Toby’s Idea Folder’ where I have literally hundreds of files with hastily typed ideas on them. I have thousands of bookmarks from web articles that have sparked an idea.

Ideas are the easy part.

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13 Responses so far

  1. 1. Mark Terry on Jan 30th, 2008 at 10:12 am

    Yeah, there’s a woman who works at my eye doctor who cornered me with the: “I’ve got this really great idea for a story, but I don’t think I should tell you, because you’ll write a novel based on it and Spielberg will make it into a movie and it’ll be worth a fortune.”

    I mean, LITERALLY, that’s what she said, almost word for word.

    And I said, “(mumble, mumble), uh, maybe you (mumble, mumble) shouldn’t tell me then.”

    But she did anyway. Basically, Dirty Dozen in Iraq, as far as I could tell. I said, “Aahhh, thanks. Not really my kind of story.”

    Besides, execution is everything. I’m sure somebody could write a great story, say, about an escaped convict who sneaks into Iraq (sort emphasizing that criminals are stupid, but hey, this is off the top of my head here) and accidentally becomes a hero and saves a whole platoon and stops an assassination attempt on the visiting president of the U.S., but…

    Hmmm…

    Anybody got Spielberg’s number?

  2. 2. Dave Klecha on Jan 30th, 2008 at 10:50 am

    Oh if only ideas were the problem.

    A couple years ago, I mapped out all the novel ideas I had then and realized it would take ten years to write them all, depending on whether or not I could go full-time.

  3. 3. Chris Gerrib on Jan 30th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    I don’t disagree that execution is what separates the children from the adults (trying to be politically correct here) but “ideas” are a problem for some people.

    For a long time, I had ideas about the future settlement of Mars that I personally found interesting, but I didn’t write of them, because I didn’t think anybody else would find them interesting. Then I said to hell with that, and wrote using those ideas. The few people who’ve read it seemed to find it interesting too.

    I also think that wannabe writers confuse “idea” for “plot.” So, they may have an idea (humans make first contact with aliens who are no more experienced at contact then we are) but no plot for a story.

  4. 4. Ken McConnell on Jan 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am

    I second that notion, ideas are definitely not in short supply. I told my wife that I could write full time starting today and if I lived to be 100 and had my facilities, I would be writing constantly until I died.

  5. 5. SMD on Jan 30th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    Ugh, I’m at that 100 page area right now and I’m totally feeling the suck-factor. I assume the number one rule at this point is just to keep going, even if you hate it…

  6. 6. Steve Buchheit on Jan 30th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Wait, you can (try to) sell ideas?! Heck, I’ve been giving them away for years. I like trying to find a good home for them ’cause I’m never going to have enough time to write them all into some plot.

  7. 7. Tobias Buckell on Jan 30th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    “And I said, “(mumble, mumble), uh, maybe you (mumble, mumble) shouldn’t tell me then.”

    But she did anyway.”

    TB: Yeah, that’s what always cracks me up. I use the following line “my lawyer won’t let me listen to your idea, so please don’t tell me your idea.”

    Chris: I think you’re right, on the confusion of idea and plot. To be honest, I actually have met a few writers who’ve struggled with ‘getting ideas’ to write about, but most *working* writers I know don’t struggle with that…

    SMD: yeah, you have to push through it.

  8. 8. spyscribbler on Jan 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    Sometimes I have trouble with ideas. Oh, sure, I have plenty of ideas, it’s just that they’re not the one, yet.

    But, gosh, it would be a nice life, if it could be done, LOL. I could sit on the beach and drink margaritas all day, and other people could pay me and do all the dirty work.

    Gosh, you can’t blame them for dreaming. Heck, I buy a lottery ticket twice a week.

  9. 9. Christopher Weuve on Jan 30th, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    I run into this same bit with game design. Even people who are actually playtesting a game will say things like “I’m 90% there — I’ve got all the rules, I just have to write them down.” No, dude, even if the game is working flawlessly (you’re wrong about that, btw, but let’s pretend), if the rules are not written down you are TEN percent done, not 90.

    Why? Because, at a minimum:
    – writing good rules is hard, damn hard;
    – you don’t really know what rules you are playing;
    – you clearly have blind tested the game yet.

    If a wannabe game designer says “I’m 90% there, I just have to write the rules down,” I either stop paying attention at that point or, if I like them, I’ll explain how utterly they have undermined their credibility and why.

  10. 10. Steven on Feb 5th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    I agree. The ideas are probably the easiest part, and execution is far more important. I’ve heard from numerous sources, however, when it comes to getting published — though I do not have that distinction yet — the actual creativity of the story, your writing style and execution make up only about 30% of the process, while your understanding of the business side and understanding how to market your novel are far more crucial in bringing success to your work in the marketplace. Tobias, what has been your experience with this? How much emphasis would you put on the creativity and execution compared with the business/marketing aspects?

  11. 11. tobias buckell on Feb 5th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Steven: I would say that writing is 80 percent or more of the process. The other stuff takes up more TIME, understand, as administrivia and marketing eat up your time, but writing a good book, while not a guarantee, and writing on time and having a book a year out, seem to have the largest impact.

    Now marketing is important, but even as someone who works hard to put myself out there, I would never go higher than saying it’s a 50/50 split between the two.

  12. 12. Steven on Feb 6th, 2008 at 10:15 am

    Thanks, Tobias. Glad to have found your website.

  13. 13. Sean Williams on Feb 6th, 2008 at 7:04 pm

    A few years back, I was all set to start a website on which writers could list their ideas. Just the ideas, free for anyone to browse through and use (with appropriate accreditation), to demonstrate that ideas are (a) cheap and (b) just the seeds of stories. Every writer who ever took an idea from that site would do something radically different to the originator of the idea or anyone else who happened upon it.

    Didn’t happen because I was too busy working on my own ideas, but it could’ve been fun.

    “the silly romanticized idea of the writer by those who don’t know better of being struck by inspiration and then turning in something awesome is somewhat silly”

    So silly it’s absolutely worth using the word twice. :-)