Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Embrace the bad ideas

  1. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let’s begin the Fight
  2. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Rejection – The Ugly Word
  3. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Learning to Juggle
  4. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: To Dump or not to Dump
  5. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Keep the Faith
  6. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Finding Your Identity
  7. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Just for the love of it
  8. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: 5 Step plan for success
  9. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Planning Issue
  10. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Crossroads
  11. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Overwhelming Effect
  12. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Waiting Game
  13. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Reflection 2013
  14. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: New Year New Challenges
  15. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Am I a real Writer?
  16. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Taking The Next Step
  17. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Submission Phobia
  18. Setting Self Doubt On Fire: How To Get Ideas
  19. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Dealing with Fear
  20. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Only Guarantee
  21. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Doubts of others
  22. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let those positives shine
  23. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: First Draft Blues
  24. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Time-wasting issue
  25. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Embrace the bad ideas
  26. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writer or Author?
  27. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Negative Feedback; the double slap
  28. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Pat yourself on the back
  29. Setting Self Doubt On Fire: The Deflated Eureka Moment
  30. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The doomed quest for perfection
  31. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writing Group fears
  32. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Horror Tree Crew tackle Mr Self Doubt
  33. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Read aloud challenge
  34. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Find your inner belief
  35. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: NaNoWriMo and Self-Doubt
  36. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: We are NaNoWriMo winners
  37. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: New Year’s Resolutions for Writers
  38. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The benefits of organizing
  39. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Editing Strain
  40. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Writing Group Experience
  41. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Dealing with second stage fears
  42. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Reading aloud to an audience
  43. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Importance of perseverance
  44. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Self-Doubt or Gut Feeling
  45. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Get ready for NaNoEdMo
  46. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Benefits of Writing Goals
  47. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Rejection Gets Better
  48. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writers, take care of yourself!
  49. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: How to Boost Your Self-Confidence
  50. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Why You Should Go to a Writing Festival
  51. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Help! A Publisher has Dropped Me
  52. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Setting Self Doubt on Fire Challenge
  53. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: How to Prepare for a Book Reading Event
  54. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: It’s NaNoWriMo and NaNoEdMo Time
  55. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Help! I Didn’t Reach My NaNo Goal
  56. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let’s Beat Self-Doubt in 2017
  57. WIHM: Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Female Horror Writer and Proud
  58. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Don’t Let Self-Doubt Make You Miss Deadlines
  59. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Hey! Where’s My Book Reading Audience
  60. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: 5 Tips on How to Ignore the Negative Voices
  61. Video Refresh: Rejection – The Ugly Word
  62. Video Refresh: Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Learning to Juggle
  63. Video Refresh: To Dump or not to Dump
  64. Video Refresh: Keep The Faith
  65. Video Refresh: Finding Your Identity
  66. Video Refresh: 5 Step plan for success
  67. Video Refresh: The Planning Issue
  68. Video Refresh: The Crossroads
  69. Video Refresh: The Overwhelming Effect
  70. Video Refresh: The Waiting Game
  71. Video Refresh: Am I A Real Writer?
  72. Video Refresh: Taking The Next Step
  73. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let’s Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway in 2019
  74. Video Refresh: Submission Phobia
  75. Video Refresh: Dealing With Fear
  76. WIHM: Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Female Horror Author Reading Challenge
  77. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writer or Author? Video Refresh
  78. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Beat the Fear of Self-Publishing
  79. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Do NaNoWriMo Differently This Year
  80. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: How Can Online Groups Help Writers?
  81. Setting Self-Doubt on Fire – AuthorTube – Learn How to Describe Emotion
  82. Setting Self-Doubt on Fire: How to Set Realistic Goals for NaNoWriMo

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Hi everyone, it’s me again. I’ve got my ninja gear on, and I’m ready to fight those fears. So what do I have for you today? Well as you might have guessed from the title, I’m here to discuss how to take hold of those bad ideas, and watch it grow. Now I know you’re probably wondering why you would want a bad idea to grow, it’s rubbish right, will never get published, but there’s a surprise that can come from even the most rough ideas.

 

What inspired me to write this post was looking back through my own ideas, and thinking back to a story that seemed great at the time. Due to my strange sense of humour I thought a story about someone getting their arm pulled off and getting beaten with it would be hilarious, so there was my main focus, and I wrote a story. Now when I submitted the story I was told that my story wasn’t exactly realistic, the person would need to be anchored to the ground to have their arm ripped off, otherwise they’ll get thrown into the air. Hmm I thought, I didn’t even think of that, I was too busy laughing. So I altered the story and tried again  but after many attempts I still had no luck, and once I got over the arm detaching I realised that it wasn’t really a good idea. So rather than stamping a bad idea stamp on it, and deleting it from my computer and memory, I labelled it as needs to be edited, and continued on with other stories.

 

So what has this got to do with embracing the bad ideas? Well recently I thought about that story, and another idea started to grow from it, a better idea. There will be more character depth and a more interesting plot. So as you can see if I had deleted the story, burned it, and scolded myself for being a numpty, I wouldn’t now have this better idea. So to help you embrace your bad ideas, I’ve created a list of 5 things to consider:

 

  • Leave the story for a while, give it time to develop and grow.
  • Look for good points, do you have an interesting character, scene etc.
  • Is it the wrong POV (point of view)?
  • Does the idea need a different story?
  • Try blending ideas together, an idea might not work, but parts of it might, so add it to another idea, and see what happens. (This is what I did)

 

As you can see even parts of your idea can work with another one, so don’t let doubt convince you that you’re pants because you came up with a rubbish idea, it happens, you’re human after all. The thing to concentrate on is that you are coming up with ideas in the first place, which is great, so keep it up.

 

That’s all I’ve got for you today, hopefully you won’t feel so lousy if you do come up with a bad idea, just remember there’s always a good idea hidden within a bad one.

 

As before, here’s another inspirational quote:

 

“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.” – (Somerset Maugham)

 

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