Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas Edison
Reading the proofs for the next edition of Nett Magazine this morning, I came across a wonderful quote from an interview with Kelly Baker, founder of Edible Blooms, conducted by Josh Mehlman.
A lot of people say 'Oh, I thought of doing that three years ago. The thing that differentiates an entrepreneur is the fact that you actually go out and do it.
Just Do It
How often as a writer have you seen a film or read a book and realised that you had the same idea ages ago but just never wrote it down or finished it? How often have you quietly cursed inside when you see a movie poster that makes the script you've been slaving on for months seem like too little, too late?
In writing, business, marketing or any creative endeavour, much is made of the idea. After all, nothing can happen without it, even if the idea is a pretty shabby one or not particularly original. But absolutely nothing can happen without effort.
I have a folder on my PC at home marked 'Ideas'. Into this folder, I save any documents or quick Notepad jottings when I have a thought worthy of development into something. I learned not to trust ideas to memory years ago and will always pop something into my PDA to be added into the folder for later.
Sometimes the ideas never make it any further. Not every idea can support a script or a story or a campaign once it is unpacked and broken down. Yet there are still many ideas in that folder that I have yet to go back to and work with.
Three Folders
If I estimated my worth by the number of ideas in this folder, I would consider myself a brilliant creative genius. But that's not the truth.
Next to this fodler is another one marked 'Drafts'. In here are unfinished blog posts, screenplay outlines, incomplete comic scripts and a host of other half-finished documents or underbaked treatments. Again, this folder does not make me a writer. After all, like most writers, no one else gets to read anything inside this folder. Ever.
There is another folder on the hard drive. The one marked 'Completed Projects.' This contains finished articles. The final movie script of 'Nightfall'. Completed copywriting projects. All organised and separated into categories for easy access. This is the folder that makes me a writer. This is the folder that reflects the 99% of perspiration put in to bring ideas to full development.
The hard effort and grunt work - proofreading, editing, rewriting, formatting - are by far the less glamorous parts of the writing process. More fun to talk about the ideas and the concepts than whether the execution succeeds. But ideas can easily become over represented within the whole process. An idea is nothing without the long, hard slog to get it done.
Whether you want to be a business entrepreneur, a professional writer, a reputable marketer or a kick-ass blogger, the idea is only ever just the beginning. As Baker concluded in the article, "I think it would be so much worse if you saw someone else take your idea and make it successful."
The Edible Blooms article will appear in the November issue of Nett, on sale in Australia on Friday, October 31st.
