I Had This Idea about Deadlines
I had this idea Sunday about deadlines and how we sometimes push words and designs out the door to meet them — how schedule beats quality and how that works against us every time.
I wanted a fun example to talk about. So I chose Arlo Guthrie’s “The Motorcycle Song,” and started writing this post. I chose it because the first time I heard someone sing that particular song, I remember thinking that the lyrics are, well, less than inspiring.
I don’t want a pickle.
Just want to write on my motorcyle.
I don’t want a tickle,
I want to write on my motorcyle.
and I don’t wanna die. . .
Just wanna ride my motorcy-cle.
–Arlo Guthrie, The Motorcycle (The Significance of the Pickle) Song
My, wasn’t I smart? Well, no, not even clever. I was in love with my own idea.
Anyone who remembers the song probably already suspects what a truly bad idea that was.
Why Arlo’s Example Was a Bad Idea
I was so in love with my own idea, I didn’t see the inherent flaw. Arlo Guthrie wrote those “unfortunate lyrics” with care and purpose as part of a humorous story. He wasn’t tring to meet a deadline. He didn’t write those words in some rush to get them out the door.
To be fair to Mr. Guthrie, and for those who don’t know the song, this is part of the story within the song . . .
.
I was doing a 150 miles an hour sideways and 500 feet down at the same time. . . . I knew that that was it the end . . . I decided to write one last farewell song to the world. . . .
I don’t want a pickle.
Just want to write on my motorcyle.
I don’t want a tickle,
I want to write on my motorcyle. . . .Hey I, ya know, I knew it wasn’t the best song I ever wrote, but I didn’t have time to change it. . . . As fate would have it, I didn’t die. I landed on the top of a police car, and he died. –Arlo Guthrie, The Motorcycle (The Significance of the Pickle) Song
Arlo’s lyrics weren’t an example of what I wanted to talk about. They didn’t belong in the post at all.
I was IN a proverbial pickle and didn’t know it.
5 Signs You’re Forcing a Bad Idea
I wrote the post anyway. It took me hours longer than most do. The hardest part was figuring out how to tie what I said about deadlines back to the lyrics in Arlo’s song. Of course it was hard, I was reaching for a connection that didn’t exist. I look back now and see the signs were all there.
You already might know the 5 signs that you’re forcing a bad idea to work, but just in case, here they are in a list.
1. Your writing is taking exponentially longer than it usually does.
2. The segues get longer and longer and seem more and more impossible to write.
3. You hear yourself and your readers whispering to you, “yes, but . . . ” the entire time you are writing.
4. You feel smart and stupid simultaneously while you’re writing — particularly when you write the conclusion that sums everything up.
5. You know that something’s not working, but you can’t seem to find it, fix it, or let go.
It’s hard to leave an idea we love that’s not working. As someone who knows, it’s even harder to know you’ve worked an idea to death and live to mourn the result. The good news is most of us know intuitively when we’re trying to make a bad idea work. What we need to do is add a little time and distance to the mix.
What Arlo’s Song Really Taught Me
When I reached the point where I thought I had a reasonable draft, I set the post aside and didn’t return to it until today.
Even before I opened the post to edit it, I knew what the problem was. I made the content about deadlines a different post for later.
I wrote this new post to share what I’d figured out and because . . . well, I like the weird irony that Arlo wrote protest songs and that my ideas protested loudly when I tried to force them to fit.
When writing becomes a pile of potholes and roadblocks, I’m working too hard on the wrong things. I shouldn’t need a bulldozer or a machetet next to my keyboard.
Good ideas don’t need to be forced. They eventually find their natural shape.
No more writing pickles for me or for Arlo. (He explains it quite well in his song.) Go on listen.
Motorcycles on the other hand are still an option.
Thanks, Arlo, for that wonderful song and for the reminder that I can’t love a bad idea into a good one . . . no matter how much work I invest.
–ME ‘Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help with a problem you’re having with your writing, check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.
Related articles:
4 Writing Tips I Learned from Peter Gabriel
Why Doesnââ¬â¢t Pete Townshend Need to Do Promotion?
The 9 Rights of Every Writer ââ¬â Peer Pressure Is for Jr. High School
Content or Copy: Ignore the Difference at Your Own Risk
Liz this has very little to do with the meaning of your post. But as usual I read your post and makes me think of something else.
When people think of Arlo Guthrie they of course think of “Alice’s Restaurant.” My favorite song of his by far though is “1913 Massacre.” It’s very moving. I love sticking up for the little guy.
Hi Roy,
No worries. It’s hard to bring up Arlo and not hear from his fans about his music. I very much like that one as well. 🙂
My segue, is that I once went to an Arlo Guthrie concert (I was 17, I think) and it was in one of those primitive concert sites that used to be so popular in the late 60s & early 70s. So we sat on the floor.
And it was very crowded and I could only see him by carefully positioning my eyes so I could see between some girls pigtail and her ear. It was pretty uncomfortable….
But the music was good.
Hi Katie,
I can see already, this is a magical post idea from a protesting songwriter that has inpired a magical thread of protesting comments. We’re going to go somewhere magical today!
I’ve had much fun listening to Arlo in many states — and several definitions of that word — through the years. 🙂
Katie,
I have similar memories of seeing Harry Chapin in concert when I was about 17. It was just him and a guitar. We were at a small hall at a local college. Liz makes me remember, I think I attended this concert in an altered state of mind.
I saw Harry too, Roy.
Most people thought my best friend and I were on drugs. We never were. It was just our personalities. 🙂
Actually, although I got lost in that memory for a couple of minutes — I do have experience with what you’re talking about.
It’s happened to me with both writing and programming projects. I know I’m on the wrong track when the whole thing gets too complicated. Sometimes fantastically complicated — segues, parenthetical comments, flags reminding me of a starting point — you could call it mental spaghetti code.
I can get pretty far into it. And then (as a friend advised me to do with my blog the other day) I close my eyes and look at it as if I’ve never read it before — and if it doesn’t make sense to me then, it probably won’t make sense for anyone (aside: This is how I clean a room too).
Sometimes I can save a kernal out of the mess. But sometimes it’s better just to start fresh.
Maybe it’s not that we want a pickle, but that we’ve gotten into a pickle!
Ah, Harry Chapin — my x-brother-in-law was his sound man so I saw him quite a bit. It was our only chance to visit, since he was almost always on the road!
I would like to say all those deep philosophical ramblings from me at the concert was personality. But it wasn’t.
What were you wearing when you saw Harry?
It’s funny, Katie, as I read your comment above. I realized that as Mondy went by and I chose not to read the post in question. I had been thinking of it as a solid “blob.” 🙂
A solid blob? Is that good or bad…..
Roy, I don’t recall.
Katie,
Like a rock of styrofoam — not good at all.
I couldn’t remember one thought in it.
Ah, well — at least the frequency was pretty clear on that signal. It’s the cases that are a little more borderline that are dangerous.
Yep, Katie. That’s why I didn’t even open the post yesterday. I figured I’d just start trying to fix it. Somehow I knew fixing it wasn’t the answer.
It need to be pulled totally apart.
Liz, so I’m sitting her humming Guthrie’s song and thinking about my big brother, who was a Guthrie fan while I was a little kid. I grew up listening about pickles, motorcycles, restaurants and the draft, even saw Arlo in concert last year. I love your post on this topic, as it was full of the wisdom you so often bring to your work. It’s so true that forcing an idea we’re in love with is an ineffective plan, both in my world as a writer AND in my world as a mediator.
Tammy,
The experience was one I haven’t had in a very long time. I’m usually good at knowing when as idea won’t work and walking away from it. I think on Sunday I just had the luxury of too much time. 🙂
If you like that song you really should click the link and scroll down on the Amazon page to the sampler — you can listen for FREE. 🙂
I would add to your list:
6. Your anecdotes and/or examples are almost as long as your core text.
7. You enjoy writing your anecdotes and/or examples more than your core text.
8. You enjoy reading your anecdotes and/or examples more than your core text.
9. If you have several days to return to and work on a piece of writing, you repeatedly find other things that are more fascinating to work on. Like scrubbing the mold out of your shower tile’s grout with a toothbrush and bleach.
10. You repeatedly find yourself thinking that there’s an easier way to make a living. Like working at Filene’s Basement during the Christmas shopping season. Working at the town dump. Running a day care center.
On occasions where I back myself into a corner with a piece that’s not working, I don’t trash (delete) it. I save it off into another folder, and start working on another piece (hard drive space is cheap enough that it lets me be packrat electronically, even though I’m not a packrat in other areas of my life).
That way, I don’t feel like I spent all that time on something for nothing. When I revisit the piece weeks or months later, I usually find a kernel I can work with, an angle on the topic that does make sense, or another use for that over-developed anecdote that I was more in love with than the original idea itself.
Hey Whitney,
I love the points that you added to the list!
I often do the same thing with pieces that don’t work. Though sometimes after weeks. I just let them go completely, because I realize I didn’t like the idea that much to start with.
It’s rare that I really fall for an idea and try to beat, cajole, and otherwise convince it that working itself the way I want is the right thing to do. (Of course no idea that doesn’t belong ever agrees.) I save those for sheer stubbornness I think.
I also save those that have promise . . .
I don’t think we have Filene’s Basement in Chicago . . . guess It’ll have to be Marshall Fields. 🙂
Filene’s Basement is (was) a department store in the Northeast. Its big sales were a nightmare to shop and to work, mainly because customers who were extremely determined to take advantage of fantastic deals often behaved badly and made shopping unpleasant for anyone who wasn’t there to engage in shopping-as-a-competitive-sport. Think of all the classic, stereotypical sitcom scenes of people pushing, shoving, grabbing, arguing with each other, and arguing with store staff — then you’ll have an idea of how *some* people behaved at *some* store sales events (and why *some* store employees quit as a result).
Most of my writing I don’t get trapped into dwelling on bad ideas. Where I ran into trouble (in recent memory) with trying to beat bad ideas into good pieces was when I was trying to write marketing copy for a former employer. Part of the problem was due to trying to write what would please managers instead of writing what I really thought would get the attention of prospective customers. Part of the problem was due…I later realized…to disenchantment with what was being done to our products and not being able to overcome that disenchantment enough to still produce good copy.
I guess that might be a #11 for the list: You don’t believe in the mission of whoever, or whatever entity, you’re writing for.
Hi Whitney,
I’m with you on that #11 . . . Don’t try to write someone else’s copy. That never ever ever (32 never ever evers) works.