Reverb 10: Turning ideas into actuality

“We think good ideas to death, when we should be acting them to life.” ~ Brian G. Jett
“A new idea is like a child. It’s easier to conceive than to deliver.” ~ Ted Koysis

The other day while clicking around the internet I came upon Reverb 10, an annual writing initiative to help people reflect on their past year and work toward what they’d like to create in the year ahead. For this exercise, 31 authors were asked to provide daily prompts to encourage participants to reflect each day on a particular topic, and then write about ways to manifest changes in the coming year. The idea is that sharing our stories has the power to change us.

A recent prompt asks, “When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?” (Author: Scott Belsky)

This is a great topic for me. I don’t know of one writer – including myself — who doesn’t have notebooks and folders filled with ideas just waiting to be made into the next best seller, blockbuster movie, stage play, blah, blah, blah.  It seems our minds are always clicking away, thinking of new ideas for books, articles and blogs. Most writers tend to see and hear the everyday happenings of the world through a mental filter that whispers,  “Gee, that would make a good story.”

Sometimes it’s like being a mother to 50 children who all want to be nurtured and tended and disciplined, and who all need a place to play, and I find myself moving from one idea to the next, wondering what to do with them and where to put them.

So I tuck them away, as if to keep them safe until everything is perfect, in place and ready to go… Until I have more time… Until I am more inspired… Until the ideas have been massaged and edited and polished into oblivion…Until I feel brave enough to put them out there….Until I have all the answers….Until…until…until…

And all the while, the ideas sit and nothing happens.

Writers Digest calls this “Too Many Ideas Syndrome” or TMIS.

So, in keeping with the Reverb prompt, here is my plan to move these ideas out of the closet into the light:

• Focus new, energized attention on the ideas and projects that have continued to call my name over the past months and years and spend more quality time with them. Yes, I do have favorites among my “children.”
• Share my ideas more with others. Continue to spend time with other creative folks to help keep my passion and imagination churning.
• Take the half-baked ideas and put them on the back burner and not worry about them, for now. At some point they will either percolate up to the top, fade away, or simply have to wait their turn. I’m a believer that there is a time for everything.
• Learn how to say no with more conviction and stop taking on projects that don’t interest me. It’s hard enough keeping up with all the ideas I love without getting weighed down by projects that I end up resenting.
• Allow myself time each day for creative thinking and daydreaming.
• In the immortal, although widely overused words of Nike, “Just Do It!” Quit waiting for perfection and the planets to align.

How do you turn ideas into actuality? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for visiting Murphy Writes!