Everyone alive has had the dream that they know is worth a million dollars. They wake up, grab the nearest receipt or envelope, and scribble it out on the back with any writing utensil they can find.
This happened to me yesterday morning. I was convinced that my dream would make me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I scrawled everything into a notebook as fast as I could, and told Curtis (he's very wonderful) that I'd discovered the thing that would make us rich.
Now, more than 24 hours later, I think I may have been wrong.
Two main takeaways from this.
My freshly conscious self is not grammatical.
There's slight evidence of some attempt at correct syntactic communication in the english language, but it is feeble indeed.
Every dreamer needs an editor.
Even if the editor was me, and 36 hours later, I'm realizing that my idea may not make millions, it's the same principle. The writer comes up with the dream, the beautiful, gilt-edged, mesmerizing concept that they feel the world has been waiting for since the beginning of time. The writer feeds this zephyr till it's a gale force hurricane, then presents it to their editor, who takes a red pen and reduces the storm to a single puff of wind.
If this is a very good editor, indeed an excellent editor, that puff of wind will be the bones with merit, and he will say, try again. Use the idea this way, as you rebuild it. You're on the right track.
And then, maybe then, the writer will strike it rich and get famous.
I'm looking for an editor to help me with my errant African animal story, someone who can pull a shred of greatness from this jumble. Let me know if you have any leads.