Anatomy of an Idea – Beach Day Valentine

This is how I came to write the previous blog post, Beach Day Valentine.

#1 Go to the beach many times and love it.

As of this sentence I have not written Beach Day Valentine (though you may have read it). I wrote this essay first. We will come back to that. Let’s go chronologically.

#2 Have the thought, while at the beach, of writing a blog post about the beach.

This is the least controllable part. You either have an initiating thought or you don’t. It’s the next step that you have control over and is critical to manifesting.

#3 Immediately take a few photos to illustrate the blog post.

If you have a good idea, it’s best to act on it as soon as possible. Any action will be more fruitful than no action. You can’t do anything with nothing, but you can add to something. Waiting never helps. Doing something is always best. If it’s fun, it doesn’t even take effort. That’s why I like both art and exercise to be fun. Much better chance of something happening.

#4 Look at the photos and choose the ones I want to use.

This gets my creative juices flowing. Looking at photos is way easier than writing. The images remind me of what I want to say.

#5 Start the post and write the title.

I start with Beach Day. Then I write the following sentence. This is not a very interesting title, but it doesn’t need to be. Beach Days are the best.

Dud title and a dud first sentence!

Oh well! I have to start somewhere. I persevere hoping things will improve. I write a bit more and give up. I am not even close to saying what I want to say. Somehow, I am saying a bunch of stuff I definitely don’t want to say. Writing is weird.

I have a new idea. I think I should stick with my first idea but the new idea is really compelling me, so I act on it.

#6 Start writing this second blog post, the one you are reading now.

Both frustrated that I wasn’t getting down to business with the post I was supposed to be writing and excited by my new idea, writing about the writing process, I start this post. Now I have two posts with titles and a few paragraphs.

#7 Finish and publish Beach Day Valentine.

A day later I write the whole thing. I still don’t have a better idea for the title. I’m on the verge of just accepting a boring title. I write a final paragraph (one that got removed) and in it I use the phrase Beach Day Valentine. That’s it!

This happens to me a lot. I am not sure how the whole thing will land or if it will land. I only figure it out while doing the activity. I just write and write and write, and edit and edit and edit, until it all comes together. It’s usually at the very end, after several rounds of editing, that the ending becomes clear. I never know the ending at the beginning.

The beginning is always only a hunch, an itch, a maybe.

#8 Come back to this post to see if it’s actually interesting or was only a stupid diversion.

Ideas begat ideas. It’s fun to explore them, to act swiftly and without thinking. Not in real life, that’s dangerous, but in one’s creative life it’s more than okay, it’s the whole thing.