Your friends call you the mysterious poet. You’re constantly typing away, but rarely breathe a single audible word about what you’re writing. It’s a secret, you say. It’s not ready for the world yet, you say. Your ideas are password-protected—literally—and no one’s allowed in.
Does this describe you? Good. Because today, we’re going to throw you so far off your comfy writing chair, you won’t know what … threw you.
Some writers take the sneaky introvert lifestyle to the extreme. Which is relatively understandable: after all, your ideas, and the words you’re writing, don’t have to go public for everyone else to pick through. Or does it?
Finding someone you trust to share your ideas with can be a challenge. And online, who knows what could happen? We want you to take a risk today, though. We want you to take that idea you’ve been holding so close to your heart, and share it.
It could help you more than you think.
Others might be able to identify the element you’re missing
It’s easy, and common, to get so caught up in your own head that you can’t separate yourself from your story idea to give it a good big-picture assessment. Sometimes you have a good idea, but there’s something missing—something you’ve tried, but consistently failed, to uncover and resolve.
Sharing your ideas in any kind of online writing community, even just bits and pieces or your basic elevator pitch, gives a new, outside-in perspective on your story, allowing you to identify any barriers that might be preventing you from taking your idea and turning it into a literary masterpiece.
No one is going to take your idea away from you … usually
An idea to one person never looks the exact same to someone else. Maybe a lot of people are hesitant to talk about their ideas because they’re afraid someone else will try to use them before they get the chance. This isn’t a fear worth crippling your productivity. Sometimes, we need to talk it out.
Because inspiration sprouts from others’ ideas, any idea you come up with is always going to be partially based on someone else’s idea. As long as you don’t take that idea and copy it detail by detail, it’s not going to hurt you. If someone else “takes” your idea, maybe in too much detail, they’re just proving to you they can’t rely on their own creativity to come up with something new. That makes you the better writer. But honestly, there aren’t too many writers who poke around on random blogs just to find story ideas to steal.
So let’s start today. Let’s be brave. Go ahead! Share the ideas behind the project you’re working on right now, or the idea you haven’t quite gotten around to putting into words yet. It’s okay to share. Inspiration comes from all sorts of hidden places. Have a problem? Stuck in the same scene day after day? You’re probably not the only one.
Leave a comment. Share this post. Start a conversation. You don’t have to go through this alone.
Image courtesy of bykst [pixabay].
Meg Dowell Writes 
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