Friday Evening, 32°F and cloudy
Listening to The Nice, She Belongs to Me.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but those story ideas you have for your upcoming, as-yet-unwritten novels? They’re worthless. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, is buying up ideas for novels. Go ahead, Google around and see if I’m wrong. I’ll just wait here.
The good news is, if you’ve been wasting energy hoarding your novel ideas, you can relax. The dollar value of your great idea is $0.00. Nobody is angling to swipe it from you. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter.
Yet I keep seeing comments like these in writers’ groups:
“I avoid social media pitch events like ass herpes because writers are lurking around hoping to steal my ideas.”
“Whatever my current idea is, I guard it like a state secret.”
“I flat out refuse to even tell my editor what the story is about until I’ve got the first draft finished.”
Now, there may be some good reasons to not share your story ideas, but “people are going to steal them” isn’t one of them. The value isn’t in the story idea. It’s in the story’s execution.Continue Reading Why story ideas are worthless
