Writing Exercise No. 4

Quote: If you're waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won't have many ideas."

--David Allen

In my head the idea shows itself, a carefully folded, paper-thin envelope of fragile anticipation. I hover, waiting for the unfolding to occur and the little orchestra to swell in grand revelation of the beautiful truth so humbly bestowed on little ole me. It opens, promising to be a butterfly of an idea. A veritable blossom of originality. A. . .a. . . .

Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing at all. Maybe even less than nothing. And I waste so much time grieving these little losses. The ones that weren't. The ones that might have been. The ones that looked so wonderful from a distance only to dissolve into nothing upon closer inspection, like a mirage. The truth is, only people who honor their bad ideas get to have great ones every so often. Like garage salers who patiently rifle through junk weekend after weekend to find ONE treasure.

We know great ideas are hidden in with and underneath the bad ones. The trick is having the patience to search through the garage sales of our minds.

My point? Oh, right, this was supposed to be an exercise. Think of a lot of bad ideas, please. Then think of some more. And some more. And then? Think of some more. Make yourself a garage sale of ideas--no custom mail ordering allowed. Write them down. Throw in the kitchen sink, too. That's a lot of ideas, you say, at which point I direct us to the above quote.

I'm off to think of, write down and file some truly dumb and awful ideas. Ones that would make you groan in pain from awfulness. Ideas that would make you want to die from overexposure to sheer stupidity.

I've come to think of the creative spectrum as a big round circle. The problem isn't not being smart enough to come up with something good. It's not letting ourselves be bad enough! Maybe if we let ourselves get really ridiculous, we will come round the bend full circle and scare ourselves silly with all the smart stuff waiting there. All right I can dream, can't I?

Doesn't this sound like fun? Care to join me? No need to put your bad ideas in comments, I mean, baby steps, people.