The death of an idea

One of the inspirations for me wanting to learn to write fiction was the retiring of an idea that had been rolling around in my head for almost ten years. Let’s call this idea ID.

ID was to become a website, that I was 99% sure would rival Facebook in its influence, a few weeks into the near future—hey, that’s what you get when you tell people to dream big. All I had to do was imagine it, google how to code social media, insert some extra steps and voila. I would be the next king of the internet.

But, since you’re here reading this, instead of trapped in a five hour binge on my app, this obviously never happened.

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What did happen was the following:

I met someone during the 2012—or maybe it was 2013—Adelaide Fringe festival, in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, that I wanted to make a strong first impression with. So, under the influence of beer and friend opportunity, I fibbed about my coding finesse to this new friend of a good friend and spilled the beans on my vision for this nascent marvel.

At this point, I had yet to write a single line of code. But, I talked some talks, had a great night, and went home buzzing with the energy that I thought was all that was needed to bring this thing to life.

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Fast forward to mid 2017:

The span between my required level of IT knowledge and that of my present day is growing steadily. I’m growing bored with my latest hobby, 3D printing. And, the brain worm that is ID is still bouncing around inside my head impotently.

I give up. ID is dead. I admit to myself that the first website I would make, outside of the classroom, definitely won’t lead to any sort of Silicon Valley success story and that I may never actually make a website again.

No biggy. Dreams of grandeur are wonderful, but only if you work towards them. I’d spent a decade dwelling on an idea. Imagining all the ways my invention would have changed the world and zero years actually improving my ability to make it a reality. Hahaha. Get real.

The internet is lame anyway, I thought to myself and probably went to play video games before calling it a night.

Just kidding, I love you Internet. You are the greatest xox love Jeff.

But I did call it a night.

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Fast forward to mid 2017, plus or minus enough time for this to make sense with my last post about the exact moment I wanted to become a writer:

As I host a private funeral for ID in my mind’s eye, I think about all the people—those make believe people—whose lives I had changed. Were they any better off for my idea becoming reality? Were some of them worse? Had I altered the course of human history?

The answer to these questions, and many more like them, was yes. I had built a world. One that only I had access to.

Then something clicks. Primal. What if I not only one with access?

This question, asked shortly after the silent eulogy for an imaginary social media platform, was the inciting incident on my hero’s journey to becoming a writer. It was the want of my character arc.

Note to self: identify need.

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Fast forward to 2018:

ID now exists as several versions of what I thought would be my first novel. It turns out writing a 40,000+ word book when you suck at creative writing is almost as hard as building a website while you avoid building a website.

Since then I’ve written a few handfuls of short stories, recently cracked 20,000 words towards my first draft of a novella about something completely different from ID and I’ve even sold my first short story that will appear in an upcoming anthology by Transmundane Press to be printed some time this year, which is bloody fantastic.

I now have countless new ideas to keep me company—faster growing ones, too—that I’m actively bringing to life in more manageable sized projects to suit my skill level.

ID may never get finished.

ID is dead—for now—which is okay because ideas are cheap.

Long live the realised idea.