Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

The idea factory
Why you hate writing
The setup

It’s not surprising that your brain is single-handedly responsible for most of your writing woes.

After all, your brain is where it all comes from. I call it the Idea Factory. And as an Idea Factory, your brain is pretty darned efficient.

Too efficient, sometimes.

Now, if you haven’t been giving your brain enough stimulation (or the right kind of stimulation), you might think your Idea Factory is closed — out of business. You reach for an idea. You struggle to find it. You think and think until you have a headache. But, alas, you can’t come up with an idea to save your life. That frustration is probably the biggest single killer of all failed writing careers. (They call it “Writer’s Block.”)

But when you stimulate your brain properly (which we’ll get to in the Focus section), your Idea Factory kicks into overdrive. See, your mind is designed to come up with ideas. That’s all it does. So if you let it, it will.

In fact, it’ll come up with too many. It doesn’t know when enough is enough, so it just keeps throwing ideas at you.

(If you don’t have this problem yet, you’re probably thinking it would be a great problem to have. But I assure you, it creates a whole new set of troubles.)

What happens is you get out there on a limb, and suddenly you have so many different possible directions to take it, you get paralyzed. Which idea is right? Which idea is best? Should I take my story this way or that way?

And you’re back to square one.

Stopped. And struggling.

Here’s what’s really going on. Your idea exists in your mind, where all ideas are perfect. (Your Oscar-winner can confirm that for you.) It’s perfect inside your mind because it’s fuzzy around the edges. Your brain fills in the gaps. It says, “Don’t worry about that missing part, something brilliant will go there.”

But when you put it on the page, suddenly it’s not as good. All those missing parts are just gaps. You read your work back, and it’s nowhere near as good as it was in the Idea Factory. And the discrepancy kills you. You think you’re terrible. And you run screaming into the other room.

You don’t want to do it anymore. It never comes out right.