{"id":540,"date":"2017-02-02T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/idea-to-thing-3-a-thing-i-m-working-on\/"},"modified":"2023-02-23T04:09:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T04:09:22","slug":"idea-to-thing-3-a-thing-i-m-working-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/idea-to-thing-3-a-thing-i-m-working-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Idea to Thing 3: A Thing I’m Working On"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last time<\/a> I talked about that step of deciding whether you\u2019ve got a viable project on your hands or just an idea that still needs some work before you can turn it into something. Once you\u2019ve made it past that step, you\u2019re really in danger of entering the Chapel Perilous of potential idea debt. In some ways, the best thing that can happen is for you to realize that you don\u2019t actually want to do whatever you were thinking about doing. Maybe the idea isn\u2019t as exciting now that you\u2019ve started to think about the work required to bring it to life. Maybe you realize you just don\u2019t have time. Whatever the reason, after some consideration, you decide that this isn\u2019t something you\u2019re going to pursue. You stick your Book of Lore in some \u201cFile 13\u201d folder just in case you change your mind later, but basically you decide that the thing isn\u2019t getting done. You put it away and go on with your life. Congratulations! You\u2019ve just chosen to avoid idea debt.<\/p>\n

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As I\u2019ve mentioned before, I\u2019m terrible at admitting that I\u2019m not going to do something, so if you\u2019re like me you probably go with option 2: put it off. Maybe you feel like you need more time to think about how to make the idea work. Maybe you have other projects that you need to finish and know starting a new one isn\u2019t realistic. Maybe the immediate passion for the idea has passed but you\u2019re pretty sure it will return again. In any case, you\u2019ve got it in your head that you\u2019ll finish this thing one of these days. Just not now. Sometimes this works out and after leaving the project on the shelf for a while you come back to it reinvigorated and create something you love. It\u2019s happened to me, so I know it\u2019s possible. More often, though, you\u2019ve just taken out a huge idea debt that will periodically distract you from more productive work without ever quite reaching the critical mass necessary to finish the thing. The longer something stays in this \u201csomeday\u201d stage, the more likely it is to turn into bad idea debt. I\u2019ve got loads of idea debt in this category. Some it I\u2019ve written off, but most of it I honestly believe I\u2019ll actually get around to doing. Just not right now. Definitely later.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t scrap the idea or put it off, the idea actually turns into A Thing I\u2019m Working On. Many people equate A Thing I\u2019m Working On with good idea debt that will eventually turn into a finished thing that you can share with\/sell to the masses, which I\u2019ll call a Product. While all Products go through the A Thing I\u2019m Working On stage, not all Things I\u2019m Working On turn into Products. Once you\u2019ve put a certain amount of work into something, you start falling victim to the Sunk Cost Fallacy and decide that you\u2019ve put in too much work to just throw it all away. Because of that, Things I\u2019m Working On can become much bigger idea debts than the stuff that you decided to put off for later.<\/p>\n

One way to estimate whether you\u2019re dealing with A Thing I\u2019m Working On or a Potential Product is to honestly look at how much of the Grunt Work you\u2019re doing. Creative stuff is fun and exciting, but for something to become a product, there\u2019s a lot of dull, tedious work that has to be done. If your plan is \u201cI\u2019m going to write this and then get it published,\u201d you haven\u2019t done any Grunt Work yet. Even if your plan is to submit it to a publisher and let someone else take care of all the boring stuff, there\u2019s still a lot of boring stuff you\u2019re going to have to do first. If you haven\u2019t read the submission guidelines and dug up contact information for at least a few publishers, planned out or written up whatever kind of summary or blurb or whatever those companies want to see on first contact (most publishers don\u2019t want unsolicited manuscripts), lined up an editor or two so you can make sure your submission isn\u2019t riddled with errors, made plans for playtesting (if you\u2019re writing a game), and worked out at least a rough timeline for the project, there\u2019s a much higher chance that you\u2019re working on A Thing I\u2019m Working On and not a Potential Product.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re planning on self-publishing, there\u2019s an even longer list of Grunt Work to do. In addition to editing and playtesting, you\u2019re going to need art (unless you\u2019re an artist) and probably someone to do the layout. If you\u2019re going to do a print version, you\u2019re going to have to make sure your formatting is something the printer can use, decide how many books to print, and figure out where you\u2019re going to sell them (and possibly where you\u2019re going to store them when they\u2019re not selling). Even if you just plan to give the thing away on a website, you\u2019re at the very least going to have to find someone to set up the site and spend more time than you want making design decisions and writing product descriptions, company bios, and other extremely not-fun-to-write nonsense that you\u2019re going to need. And that\u2019s before you even start to think about the endless marketing hell that you\u2019ll have to endure if you want people to actually see the thing.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to do all the Grunt Work right at the beginning, but if you don\u2019t at least have a plan for it, you\u2019re probably working on A Thing I\u2019m Working On that won\u2019t ever become an Actual Product. If this isn\u2019t your first time around and you\u2019ve already done a lot of the Grunt Work (as is the case with Hex), you\u2019re at least less likely to give up once you start to realize the scope of unrelated nonsense you\u2019re going to have to do to turn the Thing I\u2019m Working On into a Product. But even that can be a double-edged sword: having a lot of the Grunt Work already done can give you false confidence. After all, if you\u2019ve already done all the mind-numbing stuff, most of what\u2019s left to be done is the fun, creative stuff! Unfortunately, the fun, creative stuff rarely stays fun the whole way through. We\u2019ll talk about that next time.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last time I talked about that step of deciding whether you\u2019ve got a viable project on your hands or just an idea that still needs some work before you can turn it into something. Once you\u2019ve made it past that step, you\u2019re really in danger of entering the Chapel Perilous of potential idea debt. In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2000],"tags":[62,1749,1750,1791,1793,2127],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-design-ramblings","tag-game-design","tag-writing","tag-publishing","tag-creativity","tag-idea-debt","tag-creative-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3329,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/3329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}