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The Traffic Jam of Ideas
A crowd of ideas slows each individual idea
Ideas are cheap and plentiful. Everybody has them. Most people have lots of them. When I tell people I’m a writer, and they often tell me their ideas for what I should be writing. There are lots of great ideas that could be the subject of writing.
Ideas may be cheap and plentiful, but using those ideas to create a powerful piece of writing (or art or music) is another story. Good writing has limits and focus. A great poem or essay or article or book doesn’t do everything and explore every idea. Great writing has focused coherence; great writing has limited central ideas. Hamlet may include comedic and satirical elements, but the focus is ultimately on Hamlet’s difficulties. Jane Austen’s novels may critique the society and manners of Georgian England, but the focus is on the heroine.
When you’ve got a lot of ideas, one of the most difficult parts of developing a coherent written work is choosing the focal idea.
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When you’ve got lots of ideas, they compete for attention, and attention is limited. You can only write about one idea at a time. Or, at least, writing needs a focus that brings all the little ideas in a manuscript together. For example, this story will touch on a lot of…
