Write the story

As someone who is very early on in their writing journey, I often feel like my skills do not match my ideas. I get an idea which, at the time of conception, feels like the greatest idea I will possibly ever have. This idea is precious, it must be handled with silk gloves and kept in a temperature controlled room with a team of bodyguards so no one can ever touch it and taint it. I cannot even touch this idea, and attempt to turn it into something more than just a thought, because I am not worthy of it yet.

Writing it out like that sounds ridiculous- because it is. Firstly, trying to actualize any idea into a functioning story will never ruin that idea. If it does provide you with the realisation that the idea will not work as a story, then the idea was not that great in the first place. Trying to write an idea is part of the process of having the idea, it's essential to develop something instead of just letting it sit. I've heard the phrase 'if something's not growing it's rotting' being thrown around, and although I don't necessarily think it applies everywhere, it's relevant in this case. If you have an idea, think its amazing, and refuse to try to develop it, you are going to kill that idea.

But I have a fear that developing the idea could also kill it. The frustration of knowing what you want to write but not having the skill yet to write it smoothly or beautifully or even readably is something I try to avoid at all costs. And that frustration could cause a hatred of the idea itself, or could cause you to grow sick of it. This would kill the idea. This idea that, had you resolved to keep it safe instead of listening to me and trying to write it, could still be alive and happy and untainted by your frustrations.

This is the next mindset you should get out of. The mindset that killing an idea is the worst thing in the world, the mindset that ideas can even be killed, and the mindset that this idea is superior to all other ideas you could conceive. You could come back to that idea months or years later to discover that it has risen from the dead, with a new lease of life and you have a new passion to pursue it. Ideas cannot die, they can only stop inciting passion and motivation. That is something that happens, at least temporarily, with pretty much every idea ever. There often comes points at which an idea you were so excited about has seemed to go stale, and the words no longer flow, and that is perfectly normal. They may come back to life, they may not. But you will always have more ideas.

Ideas are not a finite resource. As said in this video on the 7 Deadly Art Sins (in the Greed section), having great ideas is just proof that you can have more great ideas. [Side note: I would 100% recommend watching this video for inspiration or just entertainment, CJ the X is hands down one of the most insightful and interesting creators I've ever come across]. The point is that deifying one idea as your magnum opus is counterintuitive and most of the time false. What you think your magnum opus is will change with time, but will have its maximum potential at the point at which you conceive it, when you are most passionate about it. My magnum opus story idea last year was essentially a rip off of 'The Handmaid's Tale', centred around gene technology. Two years ago it was a murder mystery about dysfunctional teens on holiday. Five years ago it was a fantasy series with sword fighting and feuding families and boarding schools. When I was around seven it was about a portal opening up in my classroom to take us to the Amazon rainforest, where we had to learn to survive. This was less of a story idea and more of an obsessive daydream, that came from watching too much Deadly 60.

Nonetheless, all of these ideas I would still consider completely valid starting points for a story, and all of them I can imaging pursuing at some point. But the point at which I was most passionate about all of them was when I first came up with them. All of them I have developed and worked on, especially the murder mystery, which I managed to get 16 chapters out of before (temporarily) giving up. None of these ideas are dead, just dormant. All of them helped me develop to the next thing, not because I kept them safe and never touched them, but because I interrogated them and picked them apart and changed them.

Don't sit on ideas that you are passionate about right now. Passion is hard to come by, ideas are not.