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Worldwalker · 05-09-2011, 11:00 AM

Doesn't Harlan specifically buy them from a little old lady in Schenectady? I believe they're $25 for a six-pack.

Once upon a time, I was a small software company. I sold gamemasters' aid programs to RPG players (the paper-and-dice kind) and, as such, often had a booth among other vendors at game conventions. At just about every one, some random person would come up to me and say "I have this great idea for a program. How about I tell you the idea, and you write the program, and we split the money?" to which my answer was always "How about you write the program, and you keep all the money?" They never liked that -- they wanted someone else (namely me) to do all the heavy lifting. Published authors get the same thing: people who have had only one idea in their lives who want someone else to do the work of implementing it, while they (the ideator) reap the rewards. But it doesn't work that way. Ideas are everywhere; time is in short supply.

Anyway, ideas are over-rated. Implementation is what matters. William Shakespeare didn't come up with new ideas for his plays -- some of them were re-workings of existing plays, some were other plays bunged together, and some were straight out of history. It wasn't his ideas that made his work immortal -- it was the implementation. Anybody could have had the same ideas, and in fact a fair number of playwrights did. It was what he did with them that was so different. A good writer can make a great novel out of "boy meets girl" and a bad writer can make ... well, nothing, because he never wrote it ... out of the greatest idea of all time. The difference between a great sculptor and an art student isn't the materials they work with, nor what they intend to do with those materials, but how they go about it. A marble horse by Joe Schmoe is not going to look as beautiful as one by Michaelangelo, and it's neither the marble nor the idea of "horse" that makes the difference.

There is no magic idea that will make a hack into a great writer. It's all about what you do with it. No shortcuts.

05-09-2011, 11:00 AM	#7
Worldwalker Curmudgeon Posts: 3,085 Karma: 722357 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: PRS-505	Doesn't Harlan specifically buy them from a little old lady in Schenectady? I believe they're $25 for a six-pack. Once upon a time, I was a small software company. I sold gamemasters' aid programs to RPG players (the paper-and-dice kind) and, as such, often had a booth among other vendors at game conventions. At just about every one, some random person would come up to me and say "I have this great idea for a program. How about I tell you the idea, and you write the program, and we split the money?" to which my answer was always "How about you write the program, and you keep all the money?" They never liked that -- they wanted someone else (namely me) to do all the heavy lifting. Published authors get the same thing: people who have had only one idea in their lives who want someone else to do the work of implementing it, while they (the ideator) reap the rewards. But it doesn't work that way. Ideas are everywhere; time is in short supply. Anyway, ideas are over-rated. Implementation is what matters. William Shakespeare didn't come up with new ideas for his plays -- some of them were re-workings of existing plays, some were other plays bunged together, and some were straight out of history. It wasn't his ideas that made his work immortal -- it was the implementation. Anybody could have had the same ideas, and in fact a fair number of playwrights did. It was what he did with them that was so different. A good writer can make a great novel out of "boy meets girl" and a bad writer can make ... well, nothing, because he never wrote it ... out of the greatest idea of all time. The difference between a great sculptor and an art student isn't the materials they work with, nor what they intend to do with those materials, but how they go about it. A marble horse by Joe Schmoe is not going to look as beautiful as one by Michaelangelo, and it's neither the marble nor the idea of "horse" that makes the difference. There is no magic idea that will make a hack into a great writer. It's all about what you do with it. No shortcuts.