“I got ideas, man! I got ideas! Like, how bout a shirt that says, I don’t know, LOSER. Or a hat! A f–kin hat that goes BEEOOOOWWWEEEET!” – Lance Brumder, ‘Orange County’ (2002)
Do you ever feel like you can’t write fast enough to keep up with your thoughts? All the time this happens to me. I can see the novel/story/poem/blog post in my head so clearly. If only I wasn’t subject to the limits of this cursed human body, my slow hands and illegible handwriting (aka numerous typos). Nay, if only I was not subject to even the laws of physics, the speed at which light can travel, the ink refracting back onto my optical nerves! I would have so many novels if not for these oppressive physical limitations!
Here’s another story of pure mania: I re-read Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy earlier this year. I was also working on some speculative stories. Not my usual lane—I don’t think I’ll ever write really hard sci-fi—but I was thinking about things and tossing around premises for stories. Andor was probably on my mind, too, because when is it not? I got to thinking about how Hitchhiker’s Guide references other works (Vogon poetry, lesser galactic encyclopedias, etc) and I think I had recently read some Jorge Luis Borges, and then I was thinking how Star Wars has become this main narrative with a million satellite narratives around that, and how cool is that.
Then I thought up a book idea. And another. And another.
Reader, I had an idea for a whole sci-fi series of 10 books.
Here was the proposal: a 5-book main narrative, involving these two guys with Occupations To Be Named Later who start out as best friends but betray each other and their children have to live with the fallout. Godfather II-style generation jumping, Shakespearian flaws and shit. In space. BUT THEN the other five books would be fleshing out the universe—one book would be a human writer’s study of an alien race’s epic poetry, which would serve as an excuse for me to rewrite Beowulf but with aliens. One book would be like a field guide to a different planet and its inhabitants/flora/fauna. One book would be a short story collection all set on one planet, tangentially involving characters from the main narrative, etc etc etc.
I should say this was a Friday afternoon. Week over. Mal and I had a big night of eating chicken wings on the couch and watching movies planned. Saturday was going be a day I could sit at my computer and write uninterrupted for hours. That’s a real creative sweet spot for me. It’s a time of pure Good Vibes.
And my brain was running wild with “WRITE A 10-BOOK SCI-FI SERIES!”
Right away, I knew I wasn’t going to do this. My genres are horror, magical realism, fairy tales, and Chicago. Even the most charitable math—let’s say two years for every book, draft-to-publication—that’s 20 years of my life. I’m already 35. It’s not happening without some sort of head-in-a-vat technology.
After struggling with the push-pull of “this is impossible” and “but what if we try” for like half an hour, I eventually decided to sit back and enjoy my brain like this. I get manic, I get carried away with ideas—write one song and I start thinking about the album, you know? Rather than be sad that my strange, no-one-asked-for-this vision would never be realized, I sat and marinated with all those ideas, and figured one or two of them could at least make pretty good short stories (one of the novels I still want to write, standalone).
The point of this story, which a healthy sense of shame would probably stop me from telling you, is that ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are certainly fun, but so is eating a shrimp basket while staring at the ocean and thinking, “one day I’ll learn to surf.” What’s not fun is waking up at 6 a.m., paddling out into 10-foot swells, and getting pummeled by Poseidon because that one kid in Point Break was onto something when he derisively told 25-year-old Johnny Utah “plenty of people your age learn to surf.” Watch for yourself. Nothing in this scene looks fun unless you have a “Lori Petty step on my neck” fetish.
Writing, and by extension all art, is hard. It’s supposed to be. But like, the good kind of hard. No, artists don’t need to suffer, but they should at least work. Any time I put on an album or crack open a book or Hulu on over to my Peacock, I expect the piece of art I’m taking in to have had some amount of work put in. We call this shit HUMANITIES for a reason.
Which brings me to AI. Here’s the part of the column where a better writer says what I’ve been saying more succinctly. This time it’s Lincoln Michel, aka here on Substack:
If you have brilliant ideas but need help writing, get some friends. Trustworthy readers. Collaborators, hell, who says writing has to be solo? Brendan and I are writing a horror anthology together right now, as you’re reading this.
But come on, man. You had an “idea” for a “story” in the “style of Asimov (or whomever)” but you “write with the soul of an insurance salesman?” Well, propose a collaboration with someone. Not with me, my schedule’s booked. Just, goddamn, don’t rely on ChatGPT or whatever. That’s so bogus. So disappointing. So cheap.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris