People sometimes half-jokingly tell me about an idea they have for a story, or a book, or a movie. “It’s about a time-traveling cat,” or “this thing happened to me and it’d make a great movie,” or “it’s dinosaurs in space, and all the dinosaurs are super horny. Jurassic Pork in Space!”
They have the “big idea” and all I need to do is help flesh it out. I invariably decline, but encourage them to continue on their own. Why? First, because taking care of a 3-year-old keeps me busy, and what time I have left I spend on my own projects. Second, because having the idea is the easy part. The hard part is all the work that comes between having an idea and seeing that idea come to life. And I don’t think this is unique to writing projects. In almost every idea, venture, or project, the hard part comes after the big idea.
This isn’t to discourage you from thinking big, or having big ideas. No, my point is that rather than feeling like you accomplished something by having an idea, you should be ready to jump in and do the hard work it takes to make that idea into something real. Then, and only then will you have something to brag about. Until then, you’re just another guy with a big idea he didn’t do shit about.
But how? How do you turn an idea into something worth bragging about? Well, I’m going to tell you.
First, put your back into it, along with lots and lots of sweat. See, discipline and hard work beat inspiration and motivation every time. That’s because discipline is out of bed and has its shoes on while motivation is psyching itself up. And hard work is pounding the pavement while inspiration is waiting for itself to strike.
You won’t always feel inspired, and you certainly won’t always feel motivated. But discipline means you go to work on your big idea anyway. It keeps you moving forward, and gets you one day closer to making that big idea a reality. I had a big idea early on in the pandemic, that I’d write a weekly advice blog for you to read when you were 18. It would be full of important shit I couldn’t teach you yet. It was inspiring, and I was motivated. In the 50 or so weeks since, my motivation has waxed and waned, and I certainly haven’t felt inspired every time I sat down to write another entry. Thankfully, discipline has kept my ass in the chair, cranking these out week after week. And between you and me and everyone else reading these, I’ve found inspiration as I’ve gone along, sometimes after I’ve deleted the paragraph I just finished. But I wouldn’t have found it if I wasn’t sitting in the chair doing the work.
Once you’ve established the habit, and you’re plugging along making that idea a reality, you’re going to make hundreds, if not thousands of tiny decisions. And that is where the real magic happens. Every one of those little decisions should feed into your big idea, and those little things are what make a big idea real. Example: A print ad is usually a picture with a big headline and some sentences down at the bottom. A Creative Director I once worked for taught me that whenever I wrote a print ad, I should make sure the body copy had some nugget for the few people who bothered to read it. A joke, a wink, something to pay off the big idea. It was another chance to make that idea real. Another example: If you go to the box seats at Faurot Field where Mizzou plays football, and walk down the hall to the bathroom, you’ll find a little joke above the urinals. They have seat numbers, just like the suites, and every other seat in the stadium. It makes me laugh every time I pee, (which is sometimes awkward), but it’s a great little decision that improves the entire experience.
The best part about all those little pieces is that they can also make the big idea better. In an interview with Adam McKay on What He Learned from Working with Improv Guru Del Close, he talks about going to your third thought. He’s talking about Improv, but this is completely applicable to everything you do. He says, “Sounds really simple, but when you’re onstage, your first thought is knee-jerk. Your second thought is usually okay, but not great. Del would make you stay in a scene until you found your third thought, which was a little above and beyond what most other teachers would suggest. Basically, he wanted your third thought for your character choice, your third thought for your premise or your scene, your third thought for your heightened move.”
Instead of being satisfied with your first idea, throw it out and come up with another, and then one more. Then you’re building something amazing. Each little decision is a chance to do just that, to not only flesh out that big idea and make it real, but a chance to make it better.
I haven’t always had the discipline to make my ideas come to life, or to make them better. But the ideas that have come to life, and then gotten better have always been a result of discipline and hard work.
When I started writing and trying to sell short fiction, my work was rejected hundreds of times before I sold anything. And in the ensuing years of writing and submitting, I sold zero stories on the first draft. The ones that I did sell had all been worked, polished, re-worked, re-polished, edited, and then re-worked again. That’s what it takes to succeed.
Not just in writing, but in life.
So, you’ve got a big idea? Great. Find the discipline to do something about it.
I love you,
Dad
I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.
Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.
Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.