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12/22/2010 • 8:01 AM 2

Writers: Why your worst ideas ever might be your best

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Three words: Andy Warhol. Soup.

Warhol made his name by making art out of the everyday. Campbell’s soup cans became transcendent when we saw them again through Warhol’s eyes. But don’t you think he encountered a lot of resistance along the way? Lots of people have.

When you look at creative endeavours, it can be very difficult to tell a good idea from a terrible one. In fact, some of the best ideas, appear to be the worst ideas ever at first glance.

Ghandi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Publishing. Film. Art. It can all be like that.

Books have been written about rejection (and a lot of them were probably rejected quite a bit before finally getting published.) They are pretty funny when you look back on them now. Keats was told he couldn’t use language. The first guy who looked at Everybody Comes to Rick’s wrote that he gave the writer ten pages to grab him and he didn’t. Everybody Comes to Rick’s became Casablanca. Neil Gaiman‘s The Graveyard Book is a more recent example. It’s a great book about a baby whose family is murdered. The baby wanders down to the local boneyard to be raised by the ghosties there.

Yeah, I know! And yet. And yet.

Feel bad about getting rejected? Remember this: “Norton, this idea of yours is so crazy, it might just work!”

Great ideas often come in disguise. From the outside, they look just terrible. when you finally succeed (or go indie and make it happen on your own sans gatekeepers) you can wipe your tears away with a ~~fifty.~~ (Okay, a five-spot. You’re a writer, after all.)