# Too many freakin' ideas; which one to pick?



## makmakmob (Jun 22, 2008)

I'm really desperate to get writing, and I feel like I have a whole bunch of satisfactory ideas for stories, but the real problem I face is this; I don't know which ones to pick. I would normally take the classic advice of 'take whichever one feels right', but they _*all*_ feel right, and I can't right five stories at once, so I ask if anyone has had this problem before, and how it could be sorted out.


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## Le_DÃ©mon_Sans_Visage (Jun 22, 2008)

This happens to me quite often, I'll start writing one story and then suddenly get a bunch of other ideas which seem way more interesting - I think it's a form of procrastination. Your problem is a bit different, as you haven't actually started yet. What I do is take a day off and write as much as I can of the "procrastination idea", then force myself to get back to the main story. 

What you might want to do is, to make sure all the ideas really are equally viable is to sit down and write a couple thousand words for each one. After actually writing as opposed to just thinking about the ideas, it will probably be more obvious which ones really light your fire.

Or you could just pin the ideas all up on a wall and throw darts at them


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## dietrc70 (Jun 22, 2008)

I'd just start a new document for every one of your ideas, and start writing.  See which one seems to work the best.  Maybe several of them would eventually be good stories.


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## M. LeRenard (Jun 25, 2008)

If all else fails, you don't always have to limit yourself to one work at a time.  I'm writing about three right now (well... two and a half) and still getting a lot done.  Most likely anyhow some of them will turn out stupid and crummy, so you can confidently throw those away if you're feeling too bogged down.
Just stop freaking out and start already! is my advice.  The most useful trick I ever learned in writing was how to chug along without worrying about anything silly like quality or quantity.  Go forward, move ahead, and however the rest of that song goes.


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## kitreshawn (Jun 26, 2008)

My suggestion is pick the one that excites you the most and start writing that one.  If you are worried about forgetting your other ideas then jot them down somewhere with some details to spark your memory.

Unlike Renard I do not suggest working on more than one story at a time, mostly because I find it makes me less productive.  Your mileage may very, but I find it best to keep notes on things that I want to write while working on a different project works best for me.  That way when I finish one thing I can immediately launch into another.


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## Poetigress (Jun 26, 2008)

I guess I kind of take the middle road between kitreshawn and MLR -- I've found that I can't write more than one story at a time these days, or I lose focus and never finish anything, but I would advise working on one story until you have a completed draft, then setting that aside to "cool," and working on the next until it's complete, and so on.  After you've worked your way through a couple of stories, you probably have enough distance to come back to the first one and start editing/revising.  You might find that you can work on more than one at a time, as long as you're not trying to finish first drafts of all of them at once.


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