When you are a freelance writer and would-be empire builder, it is very, very easy to get side-tracked.
It’s the New Year, which means resolutions. At the very least it means some sort of forward thinking.
I wrote a plan for the next few months, and how they are going to look from a writing perspective.
As I was writing those ideas down, I got an endless stream of branches coming off the original ideas.
By the end of my one hour planning session, I had enough material to work with to make this the busiest year of my life. Easily.
Then I went for a walk to get some fresh air and fix my posture from being sat at a desk. While I walked, I got even more ideas.
It’s eight-thirty in the morning as I am writing this, and I have an order for a client to do. My first since Christmas. I don’t know what the subject is, because I haven’t opened the email. I will have written almost a thousand words already by the time I have finished this article, without even getting started on any of those projects that I have planned for.
When you have too many ideas, there are only so many options you have. They essentially boil down to:
Scrap some immediately because they are stupid.
Prioritise by importance and then feed some into a priority system to do later.
Do them all at once and hope for the best.
Work faster and harder.
Let’s go through all of these options, and then I’ll talk about how I approach too many ideas and how I plan to deal with them in the future.
1. Scrap them and concentrate on one thing.
This is the general common sense approach to projects. If my brain were bigger, then chances are I’d do this. Some of the projects I think of are dead on arrival in terms of monetary gain r chances of success.
If you are a writer, you have to kill some of your babies. If you don’t, you spend ten years working on the great novel about a guy who wishes he were a crab, and how he deals with being a crab-kin in a cruel and uncaring world.
Whilst the common-sense approach is the smartest option, it’s also the least fulfilling in terms of your creative brain. (That’s just made up, so don’t go looking for scientific validation.)
We write because we have something to say. Often, that something isn’t logical or useful, but it gnaws until it gets typed.
2. Priorities and workflow and the like.
This has to be done if you are working with clients. For instance, that sales copy I mentioned in the introduction has to be done today. Therefore, I have to juggle that and put it in a high priority position.
When it comes to your own projects, however, it is easy not to. It is easy to write an article for your new blog on how awesome bluetooth keyboards are when you really need to finish that chapter of your latest book (trust me, I know.)
In some ways, you need to think like a traditional publisher and set deadlines and dates for your work, treating each project like an asset that has to be completed on time.
In other ways, that doesn’t help you with the problem we are talking about here – too many ideas. All you have to do is write a timeline for each new idea, and before you know it, you are booked up for the next twelve years and god forbid you have any better ideas or have to adapt in the meantime.
For example, I know a few people who were writing erotic short stories when Kindle Unlimited meant you could make thousands of dollars a month from ten page stories. If they followed the “plan ahead and prioritise plan” they had a really rough summer as Amazon changed the rules on them practically overnight.
So what do you do if long term planning is only part of the idea puzzle?
3. Do it all and hope for the best.
This was me in real life.
I have so many unfinished projects it is unreal. I could probably hire a ghostwriter full time just to finish all the ideas I have jumping around from a few years ago.
A lot of writers are exactly the same. Ten unfinished novels because you have gotten to that point two thirds of the way through where you realise the dots don’t connect.
Or, you have a great idea for a non-fiction book series but you know it’s going to take a week’s worth of research.
Or, you just can’t be bothered to copy edit your latest article.
The fact is, too many writers never become professionals because they just don’t finish their work. For some it’s even a kind of fear and avoidance. If you start a new project, then you don’t have to ever find out if the old one is rubbish.
So we don’t really want to use this option.
4. Write faster and harder.
One of the reasons I am constantly talking about word count is because it blows my mind that some people can write a thousand words a day and consider that being a writer.
Maybe it’s a psychological disconnect or something, but I can’t do that. I hate it when I have a low word count day.
When you have too many ideas, the simple solution is to work harder and faster.
This is my solution for 2016.
Finish all the unifinished projects. Get the word count up on a per hour basis and a per day basis. Even a per week and per month basis.
All those things are different.
Per hour is the words you type in an hour. Typing speed.
Per month is how dedicated you are to sitting and typing every day, and how you deal with health issues like posture and repetitive strain.
But ultimately, too many ideas for the amount of time you have can be solved with more time . More time, better outlines, more to the point.
That’s another thing!
If you have too many ideas, you should change your writing style.
But that’s a topic for tomorrow, seeing as I’m doing this every day.