[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Emily: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:20] Rachel: And today we want to talk about developing ideas that we like. So this topic came from another listener question. So remember, if you have a question about craft, mindset, process, community, anything writing related, please feel free to email them into us at [email protected] and we answer listener questions on the podcast from time to time. So here is one of them. This question comes from Felicity and it's all about developing ideas that we like, so I'm going to go ahead and read it. I'm not good at coming up with ideas. I do come up with ideas, but within a day, I'm convinced they are the worst ever and unworkable. When I do get myself to choose one, I struggle to flesh it out. The last questions I can answer are why or what if? And it feels like so much pressure. The things I do come up with are basic and often cliche. How can I develop ideas that I like and are excited to write? So thank you so much to Felicity for emailing this question in. I think this is something that we have all struggled with at one point in our writing journey, and this is a really good thing for us to tackle because it kind of has a root that a lot of us deal with on the Daily.
[01:40] Emily: Yeah. It can feel like so much pressure to make a decision about your story, especially early on, when, if you're a plotter, right, and you're trying to come up with your plot or you reach a point in your story, where you know something big has to happen and that's going to change the direction of the story. It can feel like a lot of pressure to get that choice right, putting right in quotation marks, because whenever we come across the phrases, it needs to be good enough or it needs to be right. We're dealing with perfectionism.
[02:22] Rachel: Yeah.
[02:23] Emily: So that's what we're going to dig into today around your question, Felicity, because I think this is something that we all struggle with.
[02:32] Rachel: Yeah.
[02:33] Emily: Various forms.
[02:35] Rachel: When I read the question of how can I develop ideas that I like and are excited to write, I think that there's a question underneath that or there's like the root underneath that is you're rejecting your ideas because you don't like them. So why don't you like them? Let's look there. Because the problem is probably not that you don't know how to create ideas that you like and that make you exciting. It's that your mindset is immediately rejecting anything that you want to try because it's rooted in perfectionism and fear.
[03:12] Emily: Yeah. So I think it can help, whenever we're talking about perfectionism, to level set kind of with Brene Brown's definition of perfectionism. Oh, my goodness, what a word. So Brene says that perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought. If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the feelings of blame, judgment, and shame. And so what perfectionism really is, is it's a pain avoidance tactic, right? If we are subscribing to trying to reach perfectionism, then we are trying to avoid our fear of blame, judgment, and shame. And I think this is especially prevalent in creative stuff, right, because creativity is subjective. Art is subjective, and there's no such thing as perfect art, right? There's no such thing as art that can't be criticized. Every piece of work in the world has been criticized, right? From Harry Potter to Picasso to King.
[04:30] Rachel: Right.
[04:30] Emily: No one is free from criticism, right? Because our art speaks to certain people in certain ways, right? And we're trying to reach a certain audience. We're trying to say something to a certain set of people and the people who don't fit in that are not going to take from your art what you're trying to put out in the world. And so it's just like I say that just to say that it's not possible to avoid blame, judgment, and shame or shame is separate. You can avoid shame, but you can't avoid judgment when it comes to art. And so we have a habit of falling into perfectionist tactics, which we can talk about in order to try to avoid that judgment, when really we need to face our fear of that judgment and learn how to work in the face of yeah.
[05:24] Rachel: So I think when Felicity is expressing, like, I'm not good at coming up with ideas, it's all of these fears that are telling her that they're not good. And that is, as you've just said, pain avoidance. There's some sort of a fear of rejection, of judgment, of blame that makes us and at this point, it's all of us I think we all experience this that makes us self doubt, that makes us worry that, oh, if I have this idea and it's, quote, not right, then I will be rejected or my story will not be good enough. Or all those narratives that we tell ourselves as like the stakes of what could all go wrong, the stakes of having this bad idea when what we're actually doing is rejecting ourselves before others can reject us.
[06:21] Emily: That's a really common perfectionism tactic, I think we hear, because perfectionism shows up in all kinds of other ways, right? So you'll find it in procrastination, in impostor syndrome, in jealousy and envy and comparison. It shows up in all kinds of places. And one of the ways it shows up is in self rejection, because if you reject an idea, if you say, oh, that idea is stupid, right? Oh, I don't like that. That can't make a story that's not going to work. People will judge that, right? If you're the one to say that, then it feels like, in Bernay's words, that you are minimizing the painful feelings of judgment because you're judging yourself instead of somebody else judging you after you decided and made the choice to follow that idea.
[07:07] Rachel: Yeah, it's a lot easier to reject ourselves. That feels a lot easier. Sometimes it's like, well, I can make fun of myself, but no one else can make fun of me. It's like that same type of feeling. One of the things that Felicity said in her question is, it feels like so much pressure. These questions of why and what if feel like so much pressure. And that is where this pressure is coming from, is how hard your brain is working to protect itself, to protect you from these painful feelings of blame. It's so much pressure because, well, it has to be, right? It has to be good enough. And anyone who's listening to this might not be sitting there thinking like, well, I don't want my ideas to be perfect. I just want them to be good. Well, that's exactly what you're doing right here, is like, what does good mean? You are experiencing this form of perfectionism where what is good? Okay? It's not actually good. It's that you just don't want to feel judged, blamed. You don't want to feel shame of rejection.
[08:15] Emily: Because if you say, I think this is where a lot of it comes in, is like, as artists, we're like, oh, if I make that decision, if I choose this idea and then someone judges it, then it means that I made the wrong choice.
[08:30] Rachel: Right?
[08:30] Emily: And there's so much shame and judgment that can come with that or that can arise in the face of that. And it's making me think of, like, you see those instagram posts, like the affirmation type posts that are like, move in the face of your fear and, like, take the risk, but won't it hurt more if you don't do it right? And it's like, grit your teeth and just take people's criticism. And I feel like that's not the way to address this kind of thing. We're not trying to say just choose an idea and just suck it up. Right? What I want to kind of impart and what I've been exploring lately since we at the time of this recording, just finished up the Reclaim the Magic Week, is that we can learn to sit with our fear, and instead of like, yes, we're going to act despite in the face of it. But there's something I think, to be said for, like, what are you losing? Right? What if you don't have to fear judgment because judgment is inevitable. And I think there's I'm actively making this thought up as I'm talking, but judgment is inevitable. So what if we focus more on who you could reach, who that idea could impact, right? And what would it feel like if somebody said that was a good idea and you really enjoyed it?
[10:09] Rachel: Right.
[10:10] Emily: What if we could say, okay, this isn't going to work for some people, but really focus on the people it is going to work for when we're starting to unravel some of this stuff. Because I think I don't want to paint this picture of moving forward for you, Felicity, as like, just pick one, right? Just pick one and just move forward. And then when you get judgment, just don't be afraid of it. That's not what I want folks to take away from this. What I want you to take away from this is like learning to sit with your fear and learning to sit with what is fun for you and learning to just choose the idea that feels best for you in the moment.
[10:54] Rachel: Right.
[10:55] Emily: And you could change your mind tomorrow and just learn how to explore it by trying to focus on the positives of where it could lead you and who could love it versus those fears of, like, oh, it's stupid and it's cliche. And some people love cliches.
[11:15] Rachel: Yeah. That's why tropes exist.
[11:17] Emily: Exactly. So we'll talk about this in a minute, but I want us to start thinking about what's the best thing that could happen? What's the best thing that could happen if I just picked an idea and went with it right. Rather than like, what's the worst thing and how can I survive it? Yeah, though that is a helpful question to ask.
[11:35] Rachel: So this reminds me a lot of one of the clients that I work with, our one on one coaching clients in our Story Magic coaching program. When she came to work with us, and when I started working with her, she had never once finished a draft. And this had been like, 15 years of her restarting stories. So she would have an idea, it would seem good for her. Let's get started writing it. She would write basically as much as she could, but then she would hit a roadblock and she would need to come up with new ideas. And she hated them all so much that she would just scrap the entire story and restart a brand new one. And this was her cycle. And she had probably done this, I'm not exaggerating, like 20 to 30 times before she came to us of having half written stories, but then she would hit a point where she would just hate every single idea that she would come up with, and there was no solution that could possibly fix it. When we started working together, we talked a lot about the idea of perfectionism. We talked a lot about the idea of rejection and those feelings of judgment. And we realized that at this point, after being in this cycle for so long, she had created this now almost like self fulfilling prophecy, this fear narrative that she couldn't do it. She could never finish a book. This was just how she had. This was her habit. This was who she was going to be, and there was no changing that. And every single decision she made carried an intense amount of pressure, so much that it would literally break it, break the story. For her, it did not matter what that idea was. It was the pressure behind the idea that, number one, there was no way she was going to come up with something that she liked. She was telling herself that, and it became a truth. And number two, that whatever idea she did come up with was bad and was not going to magically end quotes, fix everything. As we worked together, we realized that, number one, she needed to prove to herself that she could finish. And so we took a very.
[14:01] Emily: The.
[14:01] Rachel: Word aggressive is coming to mind, but it's not exactly what I mean. But hear me out. We took, like, a really aggressive idea and drafting strategy where it was like, we are not going to second guess the first idea that comes to mind. We're going to run with it, and we're going to see what happens, and we're going to finish the draft. And she did. It took time, but we finished a full draft. And when she looked back at it, the pressure that she had put on every individual decision was lifted. And she looked at that draft and she was like, oh, my God, I proved to myself that I could do it, which, honestly, was a huge unlock. But number two, she realized that there are no stakes to these decisions. There's nothing that really can go so wrong that it ruins her entire life. So I think by doing that, she was able to see that it's not that she didn't like the ideas. She didn't like the fear that came with them. She didn't like the pressure that came with them. And she didn't like feeling like she was going to fail. And when we were able to prove that she wasn't, the narrative that she had been telling herself for 15 years didn't have to remain true. Like, it wasn't true, and it didn't have to be true. And we started lifting some of that pressure off of her. She finished her draft, and now she's written three drafts and has two books published. And it's just like yeah. The point of the story is that I think we get caught up in the narratives that we tell ourself, and then we continually prove to ourselves that we can't do it. But on top of that, the tiny little decisions that you make in your story feel like they carry so much weight.
[15:52] Emily: Perfectionism is it only operates on a scale of life or death.
[15:56] Rachel: Yeah, exactly.
[15:58] Emily: And that's how it feels in your body. It can feel like life or death to make a decision that you then will move forward on, and it can feel like there is death on the other side of making that decision. And so you're just not going to make it. And so I think sitting with our perfectionism and saying, what are you actually afraid of? Can bring to light silly is not the right word, but it can bring to light how untrue the fears actually are, right? Like, oh, if I make this one decision about my act two break, then someone's going to make fun of me and I'll die, right? Yeah, okay, that's not true. Once you can shine light on the fact that that's what your body is telling you and be like, okay, I hear you. You operate on life or death, so I see you, but also that's not going to happen. We're not going to die, then I think it sounds ridiculous, but it's so true because it really does operate on that binary. And so you have to bring to light what it's saying and then face it and say, okay, if we're not going to die, what is the worst thing that could happen?
[17:13] Rachel: Right?
[17:14] Emily: Like, what's the most reasonably worst thing that could happen? And usually it's like, oh, I might have to revise, or oh, I might just realize at the end of this draft that I want to do something different and decide to rewrite the book. And then the worst thing that would happen if you didn't make the decision is that you never finished the draft.
[17:33] Rachel: In the first place. Right?
[17:34] Emily: And you could start to have these conversations with yourself where you're like, okay, it's really not that scary to make this decision. If I sit with it, if I remove myself from that life or death binary that my physical body is going through, I think that that can open up forward.
[17:52] Rachel: I think you're so right that you have to be able to name what the fear is. And in Felicity's question, it sounds to me like it's coming from all of this idea of pressure. And to me, the pressure is the block. Like, the pressure is why it feels like no more ideas are happening. The pressure is like the stakes of what do I think is going to go wrong here? And then that is prohibiting or inhibiting our ability to come up with all of the different option potentials because it all carries so much weight that anything you come up with just probably isn't going to work. So if you can ask yourself, what is that fear? What is this pressure? What happens inside my body when I tell myself this is a bad idea? Or like, I hate how cliche this is. What really are you saying underneath? Pull back those layers and get to the heart of these fears, because that's where you can answer these questions of what's the worst thing that could happen? Okay, well, that's the fear. What's the reasonably worst thing? Perhaps you can start to put it into perspective at that point once you're able to name the actual thing that you're afraid of. I see this happen a lot. Like, I just had a client who was struggling to get to the page at all, and it turned out that her fear had stemmed from the last book that she published. She was terrified she wouldn't be able to she had published a book. She was figuring out how to market it, and there was all sorts of feelings wrapped up in that that had nothing to do with the book she was writing right now. It was like the book she had just published where it was fears about that book that were holding her back from the one we were working on right now. So I think I want you to start sitting in those feelings, like Emily said earlier, of, why do I feel this way? Where is it coming from? And what are my brain and my body saying that I'm not aware of?
[20:09] Emily: Yeah, I love that. And I think that's what I was inarticulately getting at earlier. This idea that if we can sit with and name our fears and start, like you said, to put them into perspective, then it doesn't have to be this grit your teeth, move through the fear, face the demons kind of struggle to get through messiness and battling your perfectionism, right? It doesn't have to be like that. It can be more of a, okay, we're afraid of this thing. That thing's not reasonable. What is the worst that could happen if I didn't do the scary thing?
[20:48] Rachel: Right?
[20:48] Emily: And how can I balance those things and make it fun?
[20:53] Rachel: Right?
[20:53] Emily: How can I imagine the best thing that could happen and ease into a loving relationship with our fear rather than, like, a battle? The fear.
[21:04] Rachel: Exactly.
[21:05] Emily: Relationship.
[21:06] Rachel: Yeah. That type of attitude, too. That type of mindset, I think, also is what can open the doors to the fun. And opening the doors to the fun is how we find the ideas that we like, but we can't get to the ideas that we like if those doors are still closed, if we still are burdened by the pressure and burdened by the fears, that we have no idea really what it is that we're thinking and feeling. But once we can shed light on that, then we can play. When we get rid of fear, we can play. And when we can play and have fun, we become excited. That's what happened to my client, the one I was talking about earlier. Once we moved past that, it was so much easier for her to not only come up with ideas, but determines which one she liked. Because she had gotten rid of or was moving through all of those pressures, and suddenly she had the brain space to be like, oh, this actually could be fun, because I'm not worried about dying. I'm not worried about all of those really big fears, or at least I'm aware of them and I can put them into perspective.
[22:18] Emily: Yeah, I love that. So to kind of summarize a lot of what we've been saying into some tangible next steps, the first thing that I would suggest Felicity and anyone else who is struggling with deciding on some if you're at a sticking point where you can't make a decision about an idea or something that you want to do in your story. Moving forward, listen to our episode on Rachel's favorite brainstorming technique episode number four, because I think that is a really good place to start with just opening your brain up to the idea of playing with ideas and listening to your body to try to figure out which one you like the best. Right? Maybe you don't love any of them because that pressure is still there.
[23:09] Rachel: Right.
[23:10] Emily: It takes a while to start to sift through this stuff and learn your own cues for what you like, especially if you've been in a pattern of self rejection. But if you do this brainstorming exercise, it will help you figure out which one to start to try to move forward with. Right. And you don't have to love it.
[23:29] Rachel: That's okay.
[23:30] Emily: That's not the point. The point is to just choose one that feels the best. And then as soon as that perfectionism, self rejection starts to sink in, right. Sit with ask it, right? What is the worst thing that could happen if I made this decision and went forward with this idea? Really let yourself go there. It probably is some form of I will die. It's just a different story that you're telling yourself about how you're going to get there, right? Will it be from rejection? Will it be from not making money? Will it be from there could be a lot of different reasons. But figure out for you what is that specific fear of the worst thing that your body thinks is going to happen? Sit with that. It's probably most likely, definitely untrue. And then ask yourself, what is the reasonably worst thing that could happen? Like, reasonably, what is the worst thing that could happen? And sit with that. And then ask what's the best thing that could happen if you went forward with that idea? To explore it, where could it take you? Start to imagine that in addition to those fear stories and see where it takes you.
[24:49] Rachel: See where it takes you. I think you'll like where you're headed when you start to do this work. It makes a big difference in opening up our brains, allowing us to write without fear, which feels really good.
[25:03] Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much, Felicity, for this question.
[25:06] Rachel: Yes, thank you. We really appreciate just the vulnerability that we've seen and the questions that have been submitted. So thank you to Felicity and thanks to everyone else who is sending in their questions. Again, if you have a question about writing craft mindset, any process, feel free to email it to us at [email protected] and put podcast question in the subject line. Awesome.
[25:34] Emily: Boohoo. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[25:42] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping page ages all through the night.
[25:51] Emily: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
