Above, an example of my current folder of “Unfinished Book Ideas,” lol.
It’s always been like this. I have journal entries from my teen years complaining about this exact problem, and I had more energy and leisure time then than I do now as a decrepit 32 year old. (I jest. Thirty-two is not actually decrepit, it’s quite young in the long term scheme, haha.)
HOWEVER! I can say that over the years, I have developed some strategies for dealing with this admittedly first world problem a little better. I shall now share them with you in the hopes that it may help you with turning your own ideas into reality! And with coming to terms with the fact that no, we will never have enough time for it all… and that’s okay.
As always, this is just what works for me. What works for you may be the complete opposite approach, and that’s what’s so awesome about creativity! There’s no one way to approach it. But in case it does help:
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR YOUR OVERGROWN IDEA GARDEN
Don’t limit yourself (initially).
It may seem counterintuitive, but the way to deal with having too many ideas is not to build a dam to stop the river from flowing. It’s probably not going to stop. It’s just going to overflow or explode one day and take out whatever neat and tidy routine you’ve built up beneath it. If you’re me, you end up feeling super overwhelmed and unable to do ANY writing at all under the force of it.
I mean, sometimes the flow does stop. Sometimes you feel like you don’t have ANY good ideas and the source of the river has all dried up, but that’s a different video than this one.
Something I catch myself doing is judging my ideas way too early on in the process. Baby ideas can come in many different shapes and sizes, and when you have a lot of them, it can be tempting to put them in an arena together to see “which one is better,” aka, “which one I should actually spend my time on.”
But baby ideas are rarely if ever fully formed. You usually can’t immediately tell which one, with time and loving care, is going to turn out “the best” or “the most interesting.” Telling myself “well, that idea isn’t good enough, so I won’t even consider it, because my time and energy is limited” is probably more to my detriment than my benefit at this particular stage.
Let the ideas come as they are, in whatever quantity they come. Make lists. Keep them around, even if it’s just a few words of a premise or a title or the name of the main character. You don’t have to decide right away which ones you want to work on and which ones to set aside. You might get to use them later, perhaps even during one of those dry spells. Let the river flow naturally.
You see these? I was so so excited when I first came up with them. I have done. NOTHING. With them. Mostly nothing, anyway. But it was still fun to come up with them, and sometimes… they lead into ideas that are actually going somewhere by reusing bits and pieces. More on that later in the list.
2. Prioritize based on interest level, then stay disciplined.
Okay, so, you have your ideas, but you only have so much time, and you DO want to work on something. You DO want to finish something. How do you decide which idea to work on?
For me, that decision is based on a levels of interest and excitement. The idea that I’m most excited about is usually the idea I am most likely to spend my time writing, and more likely to follow through to the end. Excitement and interest levels can wane, but we’ll get into what to do about that in the next one.
What I will do once in a while when I’m feeling pulled in a lot of different writing directions is to make a list and rank my current choices from most interested/excited about to least. I can tell I’m interested in an idea when I feel naturally drawn to thinking about it and excited and impatient to write it. Once I hone in on which idea is currently making me feel that way the most, I know it’s going to be my priority.
Some people can work on multiple projects at a time. I usually have multiple writing projects in progress, but there is always one which is my top priority that I spend the most time and energy on, often leaving the other WIPs untouched for months at a time.
This is because at this point, during the actual writing process, I try to stay somewhat disciplined with my choice of project. Sometimes I will run off and work on other things, but for the most part, when presented with a choice, I will stick with the Top Priority project until it reaches the end of a particular stage—a full first draft, for instance, after which I will take a break.
For example, I finished the final draft of the second book in the Eternal Library series, The Tale That Twines, this spring and then had a kickstarter for it. I didn’t really work on any other ideas while I was working on that. But now, this summer, I’m working on The Perennial Empire, a humorous fantasy novella series. I’ll draft a few of those, and then after the Kickstarter is fulfilled at the end of the season, I plan to do the first draft of book three in the Eternal Library and not come back to the Empire novellas until after that is done.
3. Allow yourself to play around sometimes.
Despite having priorities and despite staying overall disciplined in my choices there, I do let myself have some room to play around. As an autistic person, I often struggle with demand avoidance. If something starts feeling like too much of a demand or obligation, even if it’s something I WANT to do, I will be unable to do it. I will become resentful and angry and stressed all to hell.
So I have to let myself go run and play sometimes. Take a little bit of a break to fiddle around with some other project that’s just below the top one on my list, even if that just means brainstorming scenes while I go for a walk or drawing the characters, but sometimes I might even write a little bit of another idea.
Even if you don’t have demand avoidance issues, this can potentially help let off steam and stress when it comes to staying dedicated to your top priority writing project. Other people may find they are TOO distractable and running off to play on other playgrounds might derail them enough that they end up getting nothing done for any project. It’s a balance that’s unique to all of us.
For example, right now my priority project is a novella series called The Perennial Empire. I just finished the first novella, Party of Fools, and really should be onto the second… but I had just finished a draft and I felt intimidated by starting another one so soon. I got a new idea about a cozy curse shop and a gnome and a very fabulous witch and a ghost grandpa and—I let myself write a few thousand words. I also made a book cover, even though I don’t even know if or when I’ll have time to finish writing it.
