Sunday 10 May 2015

The Evolution Of Ideas


Can I share something with you, dear reader?

I’d like to take you on a journey inside my imagination. Don’t worry - I won’t steer you to the weirder zones (even I don’t want to go there).

I see my own imagination as a universe teeming with ideas and thoughts hurtling around the cosmos, some of which take form and head towards a central point where they can evolve and hopefully make the transition from my mind’s eye to the real world, becoming a Word document, a comment in my notepad or an email to myself to store in my ideas folder.

The pinnacle of this evolutionary process is a blog post.

However, I sometimes have a problem – actually getting these ideas to evolve into something tangible.

Sometimes, I am delighted when I have a thought and convert into a blog post. Yet there are many times when I find it tough. Such ideas are quite good until the point when I try to put pen to paper and at that point they refuse to advance any further.

There are several reasons for this.

Some ideas seem great in my head yet but when converted into real words lose impact and refuse to progress any further.

Other ideas when reviewed at a later stage seem to be ridiculous and are cast back into my imagination in the hope that they can improve.

Yet more ideas are simply too weird to be cast into the limelight.

I equate the process as similar to trying to crowbar an elephant into a garden shed – pointless and impossible.



Yet, bizarrely, the more annoyed I am about an idea, the higher the likelihood that it will be cast onto the internet for you to read, dear reader. It’s almost as if my creative juices are fuelled by an inner rage. I like to think of this as my inner Hulk. 



When the inner Hulk speaks,  I stop worrying about how good or bad the post is and focus solely on getting all of the angry words down. As the thoughts cascade around my head and the volume of my inner ranting voice increases, I find that I type faster and before I know it I have a very crude blog post that just needs to be sharpened before publication.

And that worries me slightly.

By nature I am a very laid back person who doesn’t like to be angry. Ranting is therapeutic and helps to disperse the rage – which is a good thing. The problem is that this shouldn’t be the catalyst that helps an embryonic idea develop into a blog post.

I need another more inspirational method to be more creative. I have been exploring the options and there are definite ways to achieve this.

One other method that works is to be passionate about the idea. Regular readers will know that I pepper my inane nonsense with posts about music, something I like to do on a fairly regular basis to bore you into coma. While my inner ranting voice inspires me to write about things that make me angry, another inner voice – the Blind Enthusiast – pours out my inner enthusiasm in a similar way to the inner Hulk.


I reckon that if I allow the Blind Enthusiast to expand his horizons, more of my weird ideas will make it from my imagination onto the internet to bore you even more, dear reader.

With that in mind, I am apologising in advance for the posts that will appear over the coming months – starting with this one.

The Blind Enthusiast is currently in charge and raring to go.

Before I go, let me just ask:

How do you develop ideas into blog posts?

Do you have an Inner Hulk or Blind Enthusiast?

Are you as weird as I am?

Thanks for listening.


8 comments:

Anji said...

I always mean to write those good ideas down to turn into stories or blog posts. If only I could how many blog posts never got written....

Does that mean there will be a second post (from the Blind Enthusiast) today?

Plastic Mancunian said...

Hi Anji,

Ha ha - no more posts today. I was kind of planning to do a bit more reading and hopefully drift into other areas though.

Quite a few of my posts have come from thoughts that have popped into my weird head - usually while walking to escape the perils of work at lunchtime. I tend to email them to my home account and write them down later.

It's worth pursuing. I look forward to similar posts from you.

:o)

Cheers

PM

River said...

Enthusiasm? When they were handing that out, I was waiting in the Patience line (*~*)or possibly in the calm and serene line.
I really don't know how my blog posts come about. I seem to have evolved into a week of themes, Sunday Selections, Musical Mondays, Whimsical Wednesdays, Thursday Thoughts, and Wednesday's Words on a Friday, the last being a word challenge on Wednesdays which I use to write short "stories" on Fridays. quite a lot revolve around photos I've taken or googled.

Plastic Mancunian said...

Hi River,

I'm tempted to adopt a few daily themed posts to increase my post output. Sadly, I kind of run out of time.

Musical Mondays appeals most.

:o)

Cheers

PM

jeremy north said...

To answer your last question, I am probably weirder than you.

As regards the art of blogging, I can not give you any advice but can comment on your dilemma.
Most blogs are relating to a particular passion or subject. Yours however relies entirely on inspiration. That being the case, I think you do a superb job of keeping up a regular stream of seeming BS which to the twisted minds of your readers is a siren call to arms.
I love reading your rants, the mimes I tend not to bother with.
The title of this post is excellent. Perhaps you should take on Sting's songwriting method where he thinks of an interesting phrase or idea, then invents the back story.

JahTeh said...

Plasman, anyone who has a blog is weird but we are the elite compared to Farcebookers.

I have had some brilliant post ideas in the middle of the night that by morning have disappeared with the Alice rabbit down a giant black hole. I do carry a note book and jot down ideas when I'm having a coffee but that usually ends up comparing fat people to me and who is bigger.

Plastic Mancunian said...

Hi Jeremy,

I think everyone's weird in their own way.

I like the Sting idea. Some food for thought there - thanks.

:o)

Cheers

PM

Plastic Mancunian said...

Hi JT,

Yes indeed - the ideas that come from dreams. I've had plenty of those too.

My daily walk usually conjures up a few too - if I don't get lost in music that is.

:o)

Cheers

PM