The Bad Idea List

Pick something you are stuck on. A song, a project, a decision, a message you cannot get right.

Set a timer for fifteen minutes and write fifteen ideas that are actively bad. Not safe. Not mediocre. Bad. If an idea would get you laughed out of the room, it counts.

The rule is that you cannot stop to evaluate. Fifteen, all the way through, no editing on the way.

Example. I was stuck naming a song and wrote these:
Name it after the worst thing in my kitchen
Name it a number nobody can pronounce
Give it the same name as a song that already exists
Name it after my dentist

Number three turned into a real idea about deliberately sharing a title with something famous. It only showed up because I was not trying to be good.

Now read your list back. Somewhere in there is one bad idea with a real one hiding inside it. Circle that one. That is the whole exercise.

Musicians write far more songs than they ever release. Bad ideas are not a detour around the good one. They are the route to it.