{"id":5174,"date":"2012-09-21T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5174"},"modified":"2012-09-21T06:00:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T11:00:25","slug":"the-idea-dump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=5174","title":{"rendered":"The Idea Dump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
That’s me swooping in to pick up an idea for a story. Image source.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have a folder. This folder is sitting on the hard drive of my new computer and it\u2019s origin lies somewhere in the depths of either the early days of my first laptop or the last days of my desktop.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Idea Dump.<\/p>\n

It has a couple of companion spiral notebooks and far too many offspring comprised of bits of paper that float around my office, in my briefcase, in the car, my office, on the mantle above the fireplace or the shelve on either side of it. 90% of these notes are of the \u201cwhat if\u201d variety or they\u2019re a snatch of conversation or a phrase that caught my ear on the radio or at a restaurant or on TV.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Often these things are the thoughts I have when I see a writer throw away an idea that\u2019s worth exploring but maybe not in the context of the story I heard it in. I suppose I collect such things. Or you could say I do if that pleases you better.<\/p>\n

The Idea Dump is where I went last November when I was building the bits of the world and its story that I was writing for NaNoWriMo. I finished off one spiral notebook importing all sorts of notes into it so I\u2019d have a handy reference while I was writing. As I used a bit of something I crossed it off.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s actually really satisfying, in case you were wondering.<\/p>\n

If I spent the time going back to count the number of ideas I\u2019ve got written down on paper and in the Idea Dump, I\u2019d lose a week\u2019s worth of writing time. There\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

Not all of them are good, which is why I named it a dump. I hope there\u2019s gold somewhere in those hills, but if I think of it as more of a landfill than a goldmine I\u2019ll not be married to all of them, they won\u2019t seem quite so precious and that allows me to use them as I need them which is likely different than my original intent when I wrote them down.<\/p>\n

I am envious of writers who don\u2019t have to write things down, who have the time to just sit and type all day and explore what\u2019s on their minds in a piece of fiction. I can\u2019t do that. At least not yet. I\u2019m hoping to win the lottery so that I can be a full-time writer but in the meantime the cats have to eat and my wife prefers to have a roof over our heads. Ideas don\u2019t keep us warm at night, I guess.<\/p>\n

So I write things down so I don\u2019t forget them. The act of writing them down makes room in my head for more, as one idea will always inspire another. Always. I\u2019m not afraid of ever running out of ideas or of having things to talk about.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another folder on the hard drive, though, that has a number of aborted attempts at storytelling. I couldn\u2019t count the number of bodies there because some of them may come back to life. I mean fully to life, not a kind of zombie half-life. I don\u2019t write zombies. I don\u2019t write vampires, either. Angels and devils, yeah, but if you\u2019d see it on True Blood, I probably won\u2019t do it. Or at least not for a while and certainly not in any kind of popular style.<\/p>\n

So the Idea Dump isn\u2019t overflowing but it\u2019s not static, either. It\u2019s a dynamic place where things come and go, where one can wander around for any length of time and see what was. I can also combine anything that\u2019s there like a set of Legos to build something new.<\/p>\n

The possibilities are infinite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a folder. This folder is sitting on the hard drive of my new computer and it\u2019s origin lies somewhere in the depths of either the early days of my first laptop or the last days of my desktop. It\u2019s the Idea Dump. It has a couple of companion spiral notebooks and far too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[534,1268,1276],"class_list":["post-5174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-ideas","tag-world-building","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}