How do you filter ideas worth putting on paper from those that will seem worthless the minute you finish writing?

Peter Derk Wow, a real question from a person who isn't me! Thanks!

As you can see above, I wrote a short Kindle book based on the motion picture 3 Ninjas. I only bring that up to say that my filter probably isn't the best in the world.

For me, it's hard to tell at the outset. After I finished the one about ninja kids, I started one about Bill and Lance from the game Contra (again, questionable decision-making at work here). I was really excited about it. I wrote a section where a kid shows up from another dimension, he gets killed in a bridge explosion almost right away, and then I lost steam.

The story was going somewhere until it wasn't. It was a comedy thing, and when it didn't put a smile on my face anymore, I figured it was dead. But I don't know how I could have predicted it wouldn't work. Other than, you know, the obvious idiocy of the project.

As for the more serious stuff, I like to start writing on it, and I hope that a hook emerges. I worked on a project for a long time called Pete's Unsent Love Letters that started as something totally different. It was originally this story about this guy who drove an airport shuttle. I'd just taken a shuttle, and I thought about this guy who I met, real character, and how he seemed lonely the way drivers can. By that I mean he talked A LOT.

The project started as soon as I got home from the airport. It started out as letters this shuttle driver was writing to the people he'd driven, people he had no intent of really contacting but wanted to continue the conversation with. In between the letters there were these bits about his job or his life at home or whatever. Eventually he was going to start looking people up and maybe sending the letters, which seemed like a bad idea and therefore a great place to take the story.

I wrote a bunch of these shuttle letters, and as I worked through them, I started just telling these little stories from my own life to fill things in. I'd tell about something I saw or something from my past. And then the little stories from my own life overtook the narrative about the airport shuttle driver. I started dreading writing the in-betweens, the parts between the letters where the driver was driving or at work or whatever, because writing the letters, that was getting to the core of what I wanted to say so much better. So I told the driver guy to fuck off and get his own story, and I started writing Pete's Unsent Love Letters.

The driver didn't work out, but that false start turned into something pretty great (for me personally, anyway. I would never call any of my works "great." In fact, I wouldn't even call them "works". I don't know where that came from. Sorry).

I've been working on a book for over a year now, and it started based on a story I'd finished before, something that was maybe 50,000 words in length and a total shitshow. From all those 50,000 words, from all that sweat, there was one concept I liked, and I took it for this new book.

Without sounding like a weirdo who writes only in pencil made from beetle-kill pine because it helps Gaia guide my hand or some crap like that, my feeling is that nothing you write is ever worthless. Even if it doesn't work out as something you're proud of, even if it should never see the light of day, you did that work, and there's no way you can do that work without getting something out of it. And even if the work isn't great, sometimes a little something you did before will come back into your mind. A little idea from before will show up again, and you'll be glad you've seen it before.

As for advice, I think the best advice I can give would be tips on recognizing, as early as possible, when something is going sour:

1. I think about how often I'm looking at the clock. When things are going well, I look maybe every ten minutes. When I hate life, that number goes WAY down. Time almost stops. If it's that painful, how many times I look at the clock per minute can be a sign. And if I'm not enjoying the writing even a little, then chances are pretty slim that someone'e going to enjoy reading it.

2. Make sure and finish some stuff. Short stories or a collection of stuff you've worked on. Whatever it is, finish it, and declare it finished in a way that works for you. For me, it's throwing it on the Kindle store. Maybe you get a single copy printed and bound. Maybe you have a folder on your computer where only finished stuff goes. Maybe you try and get it published somewhere online. Whatever that means to you, finish stuff. The importance of finishing, it'll help you recognize whether that voice is saying "give up" because the work is hard or because the work isn't any good.

3. Find a trusted reader. I know, that's easy to say. Hell, I PAY one, if that tells you how important it is to me. And believe me, money is not...loose? Money is tight. That's what I mean to say. And what I mean to say most, when you're working on something, sometimes it's hard to know if it's going somewhere you like or not. You'd think that would be easy, but it's hard as hell. You'd think that you wouldn't grow up not knowing how you feel about something you made, but there you go. Find a reader. Find a reader who can tell you whether something is worth pursuing or not. Pay them if you have to. It's worth it.

4.You never finish the runs you don't start.
I run, and I've done it consistently for a decade. And there are days I don't wanna be out there. The thing of it is, with a run, you never really know how it's going to be until you're in the thick of it. I've had days where I stared out feeling like garbage, and by the end I think, "Damn, I'm glad I did that." There are days where I start out feeling like Wally West aka THE FLASH, and ten minutes in I feel more like Fred Duke, aka the Blob. Sorry to cross over from DC Comics into Marvel, but The Blob is really comics' most famous fatso, Flash the most famous fitso.

Running and writing, they work the same way. I don't know what's going to happen. All I can do is get out there and find out.

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