The Problem of Too Many Ideas

I often read about people who say they want to write but they can't think of any original ideas. Now, I'll write about the nature of originality another day, but going to the bit about a dearth of ideas, it occurs to me that too many ideas is just as crippling a problem too few.

Right now I'm writing Razed 3, which is longer and more involved than the two previous novels because it needs to bring the entire story together, plus it must be fast-paced as well. (Razed 2 should be published at the weekend of the proof-reading gets finished on time).

So far so good, but...

In between writing Razed 3 I am plagued (if you excuse the pun) with other ideas and some of them are so exciting that I have to write them down. By this I essentially mean start them as future works on their own word files. In the last few weeks I have had so many ideas I know I could never finish them all, and this is where the frustration is. There is not enough time in the day to write all the novels I have sketched out even if I took years to do it, and yet I am compelled to put them on paper (or in pixels) just in case I forget them. Just this year I have sketched out three scifi-horror novels and two novellas in the same genre, plus I have started tinkering with a crime novel as well, although I am less confident about that genre.

The problem is all of these ideas go down into word files and start to expand (the three novels are 12,000 words, 8000 words and 2000 words long and the two novellas are 23,000 words and around 1000 words).  Great - but while this is happening Razed 3 is stagnant. The trick is to prioritise, so I have ranked them in order of when they have to be published and tell myself to stick to that order. But then... another idea comes along and my main project gets pushed back again.

I expect Razed 3 to be published in May or June, depending on proof-reading, and how many new ideas push it back as I sketch them out as I describe above, and this is great because it will bring an end to a very broad trilogy and enable me to to start working on some of these new ideas. After being so deep inside a serial for so many months I am really excited about writing some "standalone" novels and getting some of these ideas out of my mind and onto the page.

In the meantime, it is essential that I accept that not every idea that pops into your head is worth writing down, and focus on the main work of that time.