Lat night I wrote a list of ideas when I was looking for subjects to write about. I ended up with eleven, which grew to twelve when I decided to write about writing a list of things to write about. Ideas, as I may have said before, are not difficult to come by. I could probably have thought of 20-30 more, but I find that having too many ideas is not always a good thing. If you have too many the quality tails off and you never get to the end of the list.
I meant to start using them last night but by the time I’d written the blog post and edited work in progress, I ran out of energy. This morning I started with some reading and commenting and have just looked at the list un front of me.
Twelve ideas became ten because two are undecipherable. That became eleven when I remembered what one of them was, and twelve when I decided that writing about bad handwriting could replace the idea I couldn’t read.
As I said, I don’t lack ideas, just the ability to turn ideas into results. I think I may have told you we once had a meeting on the farm and someone said, with a perfectly straight face, “My talent is having ideas, rather than doing things. If you want any ideas I have plenty of them.”
If you’ve ever been on a committee I think you probably agree that talk and ideas are never in short supply. One person putting one idea into action, that’s what’s in short supply.
On that subject, what happens next? Well, I have twelve ideas. You are reading the result of one of them. Four of them have moved on to be the prose sections of haibun. Three of them now have lines of poetry attached. Two of them will become blog posts. One, I have not developed, but will do. The twelfth, which was going to be about the trials of being a prince with a trophy wife and a massive trust fun, doesn’t really appeal. I am going to cross that one off. Sometimes you realise you just don’t want to develop an idea.
The next stage is typing the haibun prose and the first drafts of the blog posts. Some results will be good, some not so good. It’s all a process of natural wastage. Eventually twelve ideas will be turned into a few finished pieces and the rest will be used as spare parts for other things.
No doubt you’ll have many more ideas moving forward.
I have them all the time. They aren’t always good, I confess, but that’s a different matter. 🙂
😊
Excellent idea. I’ve got lots of spare parts you can use if you ever run out.
Thank you. 🙂
Having an excess of ideas sounds like a good thing to me. If some don’t pan out, you have others. Keeping your options open. 😉
Ideas are the easy bit. Doing them justice is hard.
You bet!
🙂
We have had a few of your lists before. Is it time for a list of lists? I only ask.
It might well be time for such a list. When we ran the group on the farm I ended up with so many policies I started writing a Policy Policy, but Julia told me not to be so silly. I pointed to our Anti-Bullying Policy, but she said it didn’t count if you were married.
Mrs T says that is in fact quite true.
Frankly, I am not surprised. It’s called cultural transmission, I believe.
When I was a Social Services Area Manager I had lots of ideas and relied on my Deputy and my Admin Officer to make them work – just saying.
That’s fine at work, particularly as I’m sure you have good ideas. 🙂
However, sitting round a table listening to people tell you their strength is having ideas, not quite so much.
Quite so.
🙂
Using ideas as spare parts sounds like a useful idea. I had not thought of it that way. 🙂
It’ss urprising what crops up – half way through a poem you realise that you have the ideal verse stored away in a file after it didn’t quite work last time. It’s a lazy way to work… 🙂
I never have ideas…
I fear you are jesting with me madam. You haven’t achieved your current blogging, and broadcasting, success without having a few ideas. Even if one of them is “humiliate the cat”.
Well now it’s humiliate the dog….😉
I thought of mentioning that, but I thought “No, don’t draw her attention to then poor puppy.” I take it you are feeling a little better if dressing the pets is back on the list of options. 🙂
Well, my daughter is in on it…
Partners in crime against puppies…
😉