What do you do when you’re out of ideas? I have often struggled with this very problem. In fact, as I sit down to write this newsletter, I’m wondering what on earth I might have to say about writing that hasn’t already been said. Terrifying as it may seem, I suddenly find myself out of ideas. So I decided to follow my own advice and use a tried and true DIY MFA technique to get inspired. It’s called the IDEA Method.
The IDEA Method
This signature DIY MFA technique is based on the premise that creativity is not some mystical process. It’s not about magic bullet ideas that you simply pull out of a hat. Rather, creativity is like a muscle that you must exercise and strengthen through repeated practice.
The IDEA Method also posits that idea generation is only a tiny part of the creative process. It’s not enough to have a great idea, you have to know how to put it into action. Idea generation is fruitless without implementation.
There are four stages in the IDEA Method: Inspiration, Development, Evaluation, and Action. As you can see, these four stages spell out the word I-D-E-A. (You know we love our acronyms at DIY MFA!)
Inspiration
This stage is what most people imagine when they think of the creative process. This is the stage where you come up with fresh new ideas. The other stages are where you build out those ideas and put them into action, but the inspiration stage is where idea generation happens.
The key to inspiration, in my opinion, is play. Have you ever watched and paid attention to kids playing? They don’t ever run out of ideas. It’s like an endless font of creativity and they are constantly coming up with new possibilities. They start with those magical words “let’s pretend” and suddenly they’re reenacting all sorts of adventures and playing endless games. The key for us as adults to tap into an never-ending source of ideas is to approach creativity through play. One of my favorite ways to get inspired through play is with the Oracle. I wrote a whole article about this creativity tool here.
Development
This stage is where the rubber meets the road. If inspiration is that initial jolt of creativity, development is where we dig deep and bring that concept to life. There are three components of this stage: imitation, improvisation, and incubation (or what I call the 3i’s of idea development).
Imitation is perhaps the most overlooked part of the development stage, but often the most valuable. This is the reality that we learn and create best when we acknowledge that our ideas exist in context rather than in a vacuum. Most of what we create is going to be a partial imitation of some other work that has come before. In fact, some of the most prominent artists and creatives use imitation heavily in their work.
Consider the impressionist Edgar Degas. Best known for his drawings, paintings, and statues of ballerines, what you might not know is that he was also in the habit of copying his own drawings over and over with slight variations. I discovered this when I went to a special exhibit of his work at the National Gallery in London, where I saw rows and rows of his ballerina sketches, virtually identical to each other, almost as if he had traced and retraced his own work.
Similarly, Vincent Van Gogh painted “First Steps, After Millet” imitating the pastel drawing by Jean-François Millet almost identically, only in a different medium (oil-on-canvas) and with his signature bright colors and swirling brush strokes. Artists of all types are constantly borrowing from each other and writing is no different. Imitation can happen both with an artist imitating someone else’s work or their own.
The key with imitation is that sooner or later, the artist moves from copying other work to improvising and making it their own. And if we’ve tried imitation and improvisation and we’re still struggling for ideas, the best thing is to pause and do something else. This is where incubation comes into play.
Evaluation
Once an idea is sufficiently developed, it’s good to take a step back and evaluate it objectively. This is not about letting the inner critic derail your process. Instead, the point is to take your writing project to a point where you have a critical mass, enough of it that you can determine whether it’s working. Bring your inner critic into the process too soon and you will derail your creativity, but you also don’t want to get so far along with your project that then if you realize it’s not working, you have to go back to the drawing board.
For every writer, the evaluation process will be a little bit different. Some writers have critique partners who provide this type of feedback throughout the writing process. Other writers might get a third or half of the way through their project, then pause and give it an objective look. The goal here is for us to avoid investing hundreds of hours in a project before we realize we’ve written ourselves into a corner.
Action
Finally, after we’ve figured out if the project is working, we simply need a plan for putting those words on the page and getting to “The End.” Here is where I like to do a little writing math and reverse-engineer from the end goal to where I am now.
Suppose you’re writing a novel and you’ve written about 20,000 words already. For a typical novel, the typical word count for most genres and categories is 80,000. This means you have 60,000 words to go before the end. Suppose you want to finish this book in 4 months, that means you need to produce 15,000 per month which amounts to about 3,750 words per week. If you write five days per week, you just have to produce 750 words per writing session to reach your goal.
For some writers, 750 words per session might be easy, but for others it might be a stretch. If you’re in the latter camp, you might need to work your way up to that 750-word pace. This is where I recommend the ten percent rule. Choose a word count number that’s super-easy, so easy you could probably knock out that word count in your sleep. Suppose that easy number is 500 words. Take that number and add ten percent (so 550 words).
That extra ten percent might not seem like much, but it’s enough to make you sit up a little straighter and lean into your work a little bit more. It’s not so high as to set you up for failure, but just enough challenge to keep you engaged. Eventually that baseline-plus-ten-percent number will become easy. At that point, you simply add another ten percent (now 605 words). Keep adding ten percent as each new baseline feels easy until you reach the goal of 750-words per session.
The point of this exercise is to avoid setting pie-in-the-sky goals to motivate ourselves to work harder. The truth is, though, when we set those high goals, we’re just setting ourselves up for possible failure. By working our way up from an easy baseline to a more reasonable goal, we set ourselves up for success.
Conclusion
The creative process is so much more than just that initial bolt of inspiration. There are three other stages that are equally—if not more—important. There is so much more to the IDEA method than the concepts shared here today. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our on-demand webinar Don’t Wait for the Muse which is part of the HUB lessons archive. You can learn more about the HUB here.
Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!
P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.
