The Complete Guide to Finding Ideas

4-page complete guide to ideas

By SIMON TOWNSEND

You are entitled to take great pride in having good ideas for articles.

But I'm sorry to tell you that ideas are worthless. Ideas have no value at all. In fact having a great idea can be dangerous because you might sit on it for months thinking "WOW, I've got this great idea and when I can find time to research it, do interviews for it and write it, then wow, every editor in the land will want it."

But you can't sell ideas. No publication publishes ideas. They publish completed articles. So until you have done the work and turned a "precious idea" into an article, you have nothing - absolutely NOTHING. No matter what someone at the publication says to you about how "fabulous" your idea is, until you've written and submitted it, that idea remains worth nothing.

I urge you to drop feeling satisfied about simply having ideas and get busy on doing the real work - bringing forth a completed article.

Protecting an idea It's impossible to protect an idea. No-one can OWN an idea. Ideas cannot be copyrighted.

And no one may own a title to a book, movie or article. If you look up books in a library, you'll find many identical titles for totally different books. It's the same if you look up a movie directory. Many different movies use the same title.

However, it's most interesting about ideas. Ideas float free in the marketplace, and no one has a moral or legal right to own an idea. If I can explain this further, let me know. It's the same with facts. No one owns the fact that Simon Townsend has five pairs of blue jeans or always carries a notebook and pen. No one owns the fact that Smith's Bakery charges $3.70 for a white loaf. But if you took the fact from book or article and wrote this fact using exactly the same words and expressions in the same order, you'd be plagiarising . . . you'd be stealing not the facts, but the original writer's copyright in the WAY he wrote about the facts. So, facts are free. Just don't COPY (steal) someone else's exact words. Express it in your own way.

But there are three ways to sort-of temporarily protect your idea.

FIRST, you ask an expensive lawyer to draw up a Confidentiality Agreement, also known as a Deed of Confidentiality. You may find a suitable wording on the internet, though I don't know where. Then you ask the person you're dealing with to sign two copies, and so do you, and give him one copy and you keep one copy. Anything you require of him, he is entitled to require of you, so the words should be about both parties, not just what you require of him. Most confidentiality agreements are considered unreasonable if they are for longer than a year. I am not offended when someone asks me to sign one, but I know people who are offended. I heard an important woman executive say: "I never sign confidentiality agreements and I'm insulted to be asked by someone who thinks I'm a crook and would steal their idea. He asked to see me, I didn't ask to see him. I would not have agreed to the meeting if I'd known he suspects I'm a thief. Meeting over."

SECOND, you can type into the header or footer of your written proposal "Commercial-in-Confidence". This is like saying "Private and Confidential" and ordinary people take it for what it is, and behave reasonably.

THIRD, you can write "Commercial-in-Confidence" on every page and address it to your prospective client's lawyer. Lawyers are legally bound to abide by any request for confidentiality. They also know that any document headed "WITHOUT PREJUDICE" is a document that can never be admitted into a court case.

BUT here's your problem. Your prospective editor may have already thought of the idea. Never be so in love with your own idea that you come to believe that no-one amongst the 7 billion people on earth has ever come

up with the same idea. I had a bloke pitch me an idea for a reality TV show about the law called "Legal Eagles". I said I'd not only already had the same idea, I'd called it the same name. He called me a liar and an

ideas-thief. Then I reached into a filing cabinet and pulled out a thick file marked "Legal Eagles" containing much paperwork about exactly the same idea. He left (literally) in tears.

Finding your ideas You may be having some trouble coming up with ideas. Some people are born with an innate ability to always come up with ideas, seemingly from nowhere. Other people use "tools". Here's a list I created:

Tool 1: NOTEPAD You must carry a pen and notepad with you always (not usually, but always). I carry a small (14cm x 9cm) "Moleskin" notebook which fits into a breast-pocket easily. Attached to it is a Papermate Pacer pencil, tied to the notebook with 20cm of fishing line. A notepad is great, but without a writing instrument it's useless. Also, I carry a tiny digital recorder on my key-ring, and use it when an idea hits me while driving when I can talk but can't write.