A Short, Disorganized Essay About Ideas

A Short, Disorganized Essay About Ideas

 

Where do you get ideas from? That’s the biggest hurdle one has to overcome as a creator who is struggling to find out just what they want to create. You may want to write, to paint, to make a film, but you can do none of it without an idea of what you want to make it about. The substance of what you create is just as important as the medium by which you create it. So, the only question left is: Where do you get ideas from? The answer is simple, yet complex at the same time. Part of it stems from personal experience, while a lot of it stems from seemingly nowhere at all. I’d love to tell you that ideas grow on trees, that you can just pick and choose which ones to pursue and be done with it. But that’s not really how ideas work when you’re trying to create something. It’s all about the personal, natural journey to that idea. It’s rarely something you can force onto yourself.

 

For example, I couldn’t tell you where my ideas come from because I don’t know. I suppose part of it has to do with personal experience, another part the way I perceive the world, and another part the media I consume in order to improve my own craft. But if I told you I consciously sat down in front of a blank word document or an inkless notebook, straining to come up with an idea as to what I should write about…well, that would be dishonest. Ideas, from what I’ve experienced, don’t come forcibly. They simply happen, springing from your mind or from the world around you, out of the blue. You never really know when you’re going to get an idea, and you never really know what it’s going to be. But, at some point, if you are someone who is entwined in the creative arts, you are bound to get an idea. How long it takes simply can’t be determined.

 

But it isn’t just about getting ideas. It’s also about getting good ideas. Bad ideas are a dime a dozen nowadays; it doesn’t take a genius to get a bad idea. Lucky for us, it doesn’t take a genius to get a good idea either. And, just like the two paragraphs above, this is going to be more non-advice than anything else. How do you get a good idea? The same way you get any idea. It’ll come to you when it’s ready. But how do you know you have a good idea? Believe it or not, that’s the easiest part of getting ideas: Knowing when you have a good one. Because when you have a good idea for a work of art, it never leaves you alone. Like a splinter in your mind, it’s something that’s itching to be pulled out. And, so long as you have the tools, you can do so, placing it ever so carefully onto the page, the canvas, or the screen. Ideas are the lifeblood of any creator. When it starts flowing, you have to make sure to keep it moving.