The Viral View

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that most Friday’s I do a book review. Basically this review involves me talking about whatever I happen to have just finished reading at the time.

But lately I’ve been thinking about reviews a lot. Most people would look at a review of a book or a movie as a simple examination of the works strengths and weaknesses, a condensed rundown to give the reader some idea of whether or not they might like this particular book or movie.

But lately I’ve started to think of reviews as something else: viruses.

Okay, there’s no need to back away like that, and…whoa, where did that straight-jacket come from. Have you been carrying that with you the whole time?

I’m not crazy. Well, not with this anyway. Just hear me out.

Reviews are often tagged as being “spoiler free”. This means that the reviewer has not included any information that would “spoil” the readers enjoyment of the work being reviewed. But is any review, truly spoiler free?

Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I watch a movie or read a book after having read a review of that book I’m watching for the things the reviewer pointed out.

Weak third act structure? Yep.

Poorly developed characters? Check that one off the list.

Cunning use of white space? Got it.

Except those ideas aren’t my ideas. They’re not my opinions. I’ve been infected with the reviewer’s point of view.

It’s possible I might have made those same assesments on my own, but now I’ll never know for sure. Because I let myself be infected with the virus.

In truth this idea applies to far more than just movie reviews. We interact with others on a daily basis, taking recommendations, sharing opinions, transfering information. When you get right down to it none of the ideas in our heads belong to us. They’ve all come from somewhere external.

Immanuel Kant hypothesized that ideas like time and space existed “a priori” outside of external influence, because, he reasoned, thinking would be impossible without them. But with all due respect to Mr. Kant, he’s never lived in a universe without time. Simply because neither he nor any of us is capable of imagining how thought might occur in such place does not mean that such a thing is impossible.

In fact the idea for this very blog post, came from listening to someone else talking about how they tried to watch movies without any preconceptions and work out wether they liked it for themselves.

You might think that I’m leading up to saying that I’m going to discontinue the Bizzaro Book Review and let you all discover your own books without preconceptions.

But if you think that, then you obviously don’t know me that well. Because seriously? I have a chance to infect all of your brains with my ideas? Get me a ticket on that train.

Call up the CDC and tell them there’s a madman in Florida cooking up idea bugs in his garage. Make sure you scream as loudly as you can.

And don’t mind the men with the special jacket with the long sleeves. They’re only there to help.

Expiration Date

Lately I’ve heard a lot about the question of where story ideas come from.  Of course there are various ways of explaining and simplifying the idea process for non-writers, but none of the explanations I can think of really match up with the truth.  I think that’s why the ancient Greek writers came with the idea of the muse.  That way when someone asked them where their ideas came from they could say, “Some invisible lady whispers them in my ear.  She’s pretty well connected with the gods.  And she doesn’t like you asking questions about her.”  Cue the sound of scampering feet and peace and quiet for the writer.

But that isn’t what I want to talk about today.  Because I was thinking about it today, and while there is a great deal of interest in where story ideas come from,  no one ever asks where they go.

Of course, some of them get written.  That’s the way it’s supposed to go.  You get this idea bouncing around in your head, inspiring all kinds of mental images and burning up your neurons, and you say, “I am a responsible writer who will make time for this wonderful idea today or tomorrow at the very latest.”  Except down here in the real world it doesn’t always happen that way.  We get busy.  We get sidetracked with other writing.  Maybe we’re just plain lazy.  But for whatever reason, that idea sits up in our head for days that turn into weeks and maybe months, and we don’t do anything about it.

The problem?  Ideas are like groceries.  They have an expiration date.  Some ideas are like beef jerky.  You can leave them sitting on the shelf for months, maybe even forget about them for a while, but when you come back to them they’re just as good as ever.  But sometimes an idea is more like milk.  You bring it home and put it in the refrigerator of your mind, and you intend to do something about it, but then the cool-aid pitcher of taking down the Christmas tree gets shoved in front of it, and maybe you forget about your idea entirely.  When you finally do find it again you go to pour it into the cereal bowl of your story and it comes out all lumpy and sour.

Maybe you think you can strain out some of the bigger lumps to make it better, and [stretched metaphor alert: Abort, Abort, Abort] polish up the prose a little after the fact.  But there’s a sinking feeling in your gut that you’re not going to be able to pull it off.  Your idea is dead. Even if you could bring it back, it would be a zombie story doomed to roam the wastelands of mediocrity in search of a reader whose brains it can feast upon.

This nearly happened to me recently.  Several weeks back I had a short story idea that I called “The Thing in the Shed.”  “The Thing in the Shed” is a story about a shed, and a Thing which lives inside of it.  Also there is a dog involved.  And a boy.  But “The Thing in the Shed and also a Dog and the Boy Who Owns the Dog” doesn’t quite carry the same weight titlewise.

I really liked the idea, but it came to me with very few details, so I sat on it for a while and tried to fill in where I thought the story should go.  I had some great moments of inspiration, not the least of which was the moment that I went for a walk at my step-grandmother-in-law’s house and found the perfect shed for the story: a rotted wooden structure all covered over with vines and filled with motes of dust dancing in the dying light that scattered through the cracks in the walls.

But after that I did nothing.  I filed the idea away and told myself that I would get to it soon.  Except I had other projects and other stories occupying my time, and I just didn’t do anything about it. But I could feel the idea going stale in my head, and I could sense little bits of mold starting to grow on it.  It was still salvageable, but only if I acted quickly.

I wanted to put it off.  Between writing yesterday’s blog post, going to sell my plasma (because I am poor), and going to work, I had a pretty full plate.  But I knew if I waited even one more day the idea might be gone completely.  So I scarfed down my lunch, went across the street to the Whataburger where I can plug my laptop in, and I wrote.  And while I didn’t get the story finished, I got enough of it formed into words to keep it alive in my mind.  Today I hope to finish it, and I’ll be posting it soon for your perusal.  But if I hadn’t forced myself to get to work on that story I truly believe it would have been gone before much longer.

What about the rest of you?  Have you ever let a story idea go beyond its sell-by date?  Think I’m full of crap?  Let me hear about it in the comments.