Not quite tall enough to ride this ride

[swan_tower]

How many of you have That Idea -- a story, or piece of art, or music, or whatever -- that you know you're not quite good enough to pull off yet?

Last night I finally said to someone outside my skull that I have one of those. The earliest roots of it, I realized, go farther back than I thought; all the way to high school, in fact. I really wasn't tall enough to ride that ride at the time, and so the concept never went anywhere other than swimming around in my brain and me jotting down, over a period of years, quotations to feed it in my brain. More recently I've taken a semi-stab at it, in totally different form, and the semi-stab isn't bad, but I don't think it's quite what I want it to be. I could try again, but I have that fallow feeling, the one where I need to just let this live in the back of my brain and quietly accumulate some more quotations and thoughts and stories that will nibble around the edges of the idea without trying to swallow it whole, not just yet.

I'm not quite tall enough to ride this ride. Which can sometimes be a dangerous thought to accept, because the way we grow taller for this sort of thing is by doing; if you tell yourself "oh, I'm not good enough for that yet," you may never get good enough. Sometimes it's better to try anyway. But -- depending on your own personal brain installation -- it may be the case that trying and failing with that particular idea means the seed is now dead; you've used it up and gotten not nearly enough for your efforts. I'm hoping I haven't done that with the aforementioned semi-stab. Over the years I've gotten a lot better at meaningfully reshaping a story in revision, and I've had at least a couple of short fiction instances of me taking a new run at an idea that fell flat the first time, so there's reason to think I might be able to try this one again. For other people, though, the risk is real. In which case you have to trust yourself to figure out which seeds should be left to germinate for longer and which ones can be used as fodder for growth.

Yes, I know I'm talking vaguely around the actual thing in question. That's because I have hangups about discussing nascent ideas in public. But if others among you have your own instances of this kind of thing, it would be pleasing to know I'm not alone.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/lAbowe)

Comments

[yhlee]

Oh yeah, this happens to me all the time. The story I sold recently to Tor.com was one I started 4-5 years ago, couldn't figure out how to end it or what to do with it, and I knew it was time to set it aside and let it be. Then last year I read Kirk W. Johnson's The Feather Thief, which sparked an idea for how to handle the ending - but I still wasn't ready. Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I was FINALLY ready to complete the story, which happened in a couple DAYS after the years of lying fallow.

Ninefox Gambit had its origins in both a Rokugan 3000 fanfic project I did with friends (although it diverged in almost every way imaginable other than "multiple factions/clans") plus stuff floating in my head since high school, when I first wanted to write sf but wasn't ready to tackle a novel yet.

[swan_tower]

It took me over sixteen years to write "Fate, Hope, Friendship, Foe," but that felt like a different kind of delay. That was me not knowing where I wanted to go with that idea or how to get there, as opposed to having a visceral sense of what I wanted to evoke, and a sneaking suspicion that I wasn't yet a good enough writer to pull it off. (Though undeniably it's a better and deeper story than it would have been had I actually drafted it sixteen years ago.)

[yhlee]

If you want musical examples, I was writing for orchestra in high school but it took me eight years from inception to final version to produce and release "Ninefox March," and ten years for "Raven Ascendant" (forthcoming, but the piece is complete). Another piece in the upcoming hexarchate album, I originally wrote 20 years ago in MIDI but couldn't figure out how to produce in acceptable format until after I'd done "Ninefox March." The pleasing thing is that "March" took all that time but all the things I learned from it (both in terms of raw composition and technical computer stuff) has made everything after it go exponentially faster!

[watersword]

YEP. Yep yep yep. Mine goes back to adolescence as well.

[swan_tower]

I've got another dates-back-to-adolescence idea, but its problems are very different; it started out as fanfic, I trunked it to let the bits I wasn't as attached to fall away until I had only the burning core left, and now I'm not sure there is a core any longer. Which ought to mean it's just perma-trunked, but my subconscious keeps insisting otherwise, so . . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[watersword]

Yeah, my Amusement Park Ride Story has undergone significant change since age *koff* but it comes from the same obsession so in my head it's just been morphing rather than being replaced by new stories.

[kutsuwamushi]

I have a story that has been kicking around since I was in high school, too. At its core, it's a (fantasy) story about a group of people who come together on a religious pilgrimage, needing/wanting very different things out of the journey but eventually coming together to change the world.

I never tried to write it because the pieces haven't all come together yet; I'm still not entirely sure what I want it to do or to say. I think that if I sat down and really worked on it, I would be able to answer a lot of those questions, but I don't feel Ready(TM) yet.

[swan_tower]

You might try taking a shot at sitting down and really working on it? Sometimes that's what you need to make the pieces come together, to figure out what you want it to do or to say.

[kutsuwamushi]

I would, but I think that my vision for it is still above my skill level! "Someday" is the word that everyone regrets, I know, but that's still what I'm telling myself.

[pameladean]

This all sounds very familiar, yes indeed.

I have at least two projects of this sort, one probably a novella, the other probably a novel. With the novella, I'm not sure that I'll ever be tall enough to ride that ride, having been born in the wrong time to properly internalize all the nuances I want to have involved. With the other, I can probably do it after I write several other things that have been proceeding slowly; or when it decides to jump up and ambush me.

I too am feeding one of these with quotations; the other is a bit inchoate for that just yet.

P.

[swan_tower]

Good luck with them!

[marycatelli]

It's generally that I can't grow the idea into a full story idea yet.

[swan_tower]

That to me is a separate thing, but of course individual mileage varies. I have tons of "this is a nice seed, but where am I going with it?" bits sitting around waiting to sprout, and I've learned to let them just bide until they're ready.

[mrissa]

They live like glaciers in my head.

I like glaciers, though, so it's not too bad.

[swan_tower]

Heh. So . . . your ideas are on ice? <runs away>