Execution

After setting the title and deadline for my next essay (good ideas) I decided that was quite enough effort for one day and took an unearned break to watch the latest episodes of Rick & Morty on Netflix.

I was thoroughly pleased. This new episode was proving to be just as remarkable as previous episodes.

There I was, happy as Larry, loving the classic grandfather grandson rapport. Morty was berating Rick for his poor vat of acid plan, he was hounding him, searching for an admission that it was a bad idea.

And then Rick casually replies with this one liner:

‘There’s no such thing as a bad idea Morty. It’s about execution.’

It was like the universe was simultaneously throwing me a bone and saying get back to work.

Then I remembered I had heard Dan Harmon (the show’s co-creator) spout some profound truths about writer’s block before.

I tracked down the quote and pulled out the best bits just for you:

“If you simply change your goal from ‘writing well’ to ‘writing badly’, you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material… Switch from team ‘I will one day write something good’ to team ‘I have no choice but to write a piece of shit’ and then take off your ‘bad writer’ hat and replace it with a ‘petty critic’ hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough”

The pressure to be good gets in the way of starting.

I highly doubt the idea of Star Wars came to George Lucas fully formed, three feature length movies all at once.

So lower the bar to get started and then edit, tweak and draft your way to a good idea.