Many writers keep a handy notebook for jotting down random ideas
that spring to mind or observations they make as they go about their lives have
some resonance for them. When I decided that I was going to throw myself into
fiction writing, I spent a year or so with such a notebook in my bag. But it
stayed in my bag for the most part. I looked around, I listened to people’s
conversations, I noticed the quirky, the fascinating, the poignant. But I didn’t
feel drawn to record any of it.
I don’t write down ideas for new stories as they occur to me
either. I have done this occasionally, but these half-formed ideas mock me with
their incompleteness. What’s the point
of this three sentence outline of a setting without a plot or characters? Why did
I bother to record that I wanted to write
something futuristic about refugees? The trouble is, I have so many ideas
popping into my head and writing them down gives them a substance they don’t
yet deserve. Those ideas, they’re the ones people tell you about when you tell
them you’re a writer. “I’ve got this really good idea for a book,” they start
and they know and you know that the idea is not enough.
