Ask the Editor: "Help! I have too many book ideas!"
Ah, fall. A time to return to the #basics: pumpkin spice latte foam art, tastefully styled porch displays, and other set pieces from the first draft of “White Woman’s Instagram.”
For me, it’s also a time to return to my generative writing practice. In 2021, I’ve mapped my writing life onto a new annual cycle, and it is helping me flourish in leaps and bounds. By acknowledging my strengths and weaknesses—including using a time of the year that I’m historically sluggish to nurture my craft instead of forcing my nose to a grindstone—I have inadvertently resolved questions like the one my friend and former client asked me this spring.
Q: On a writing note, I am finding it difficult to stay on one project at a time. I think I have four distinct projects I am working on. Two of them are active. Do you have this problem as well?
My first reaction to his query? Woof. Boy, do I.
I know this "too many good ideas" problem well. It may sound like a caviar-dreams type of concern—or as Chandler Bing might say, “My wallet’s too small for my fifties, and my diamond shoes are too tight!”—but it can often waylay one’s productivity.
The pros of having too many book ideas at once:
You’ve got a lot of content maturing in the pipeline.
You’ve got more than one book in you, which agents love to hear, as it’s not always financially viable to work with authors who only have one story to tell. (Sorry, Harper Lee.)
The cons of having too many book ideas at once:
You spin your wheels, bouncing from project to project as each demoralizes or bores you.
You feel like writing is a waste of time because you aren’t reaching tangible benchmarks.
You may even quit writing for a while or forever because it feels like you’ll never get anywhere in your writing career.
These cons aren’t conjecture or judgment. They describe how I’ve actually felt in the past when I, too, bounced from project to project. Inevitably I’d get “bored” with a project (i.e., too scared and anxious to work on it when I faced my first snarl of writer’s block). Because I pivoted from project to project, I felt like I was spinning my wheels, wasting my time, and getting nowhere with my writing career.
How I’m Learning to Avoid This Situation.
I'm trying to avoid the “too many good ideas” paradox by admitting my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the soft skills that surround my writing life. One of my soft-skill strengths is the ability to stick to a timeline, no matter how grueling, once I put it in place. One of my weaknesses is a bizarre lack of energy and motivation that surfaces between April and September. It's like reverse seasonal affective disorder. I'm right as rain come the fall and winter months, but spring and summer make me unable to do much more than the minimum.
As a result, starting in 2021, I've used April to September as my "growing season," in which I brushed up on my craft and read books and watched films about my next area of interest. Now, in the fall, I’m harvesting it all into more creative, generative work on a singular novel, according to a production timeline I created.
I say “singular novel” rather than “singular project” because I do on occasion use my writing sessions to work on smaller projects like short stories and essay pitches, but the one goal I am determined to accomplish between now and March 19, 2022, is to finish a rough draft of my novel. If I continue in this way, I can feel good about drafting one decent project per year, then having the rest of the year to edit it and prepare to send it out. (Eventually an agent has to respond well to one of them, right?)
My strategy is already paying dividends. Since implementing this cyclical process, I’ve had a greater sense of belief in myself as a writer, as I’m actually hitting tangible benchmarks. I’ve had three short stories published, written three chapters of my novel, and found a creative rhythm for myself.
How You Can Avoid This Situation.
Reverse-Engineer Solutions to Your Causes of Friction.
Make Socrates proud and know thyself. In this set of circumstances, you might start by asking what led you to have so many ideas and so little focus. Here are two sample answers to get the ball rolling:
I’m scared of what it means to finish one whole project. What’s the next step?
I get bored with my old ideas, especially when the new one looks so shiny.
Then, reverse-engineer a solution that will help reduce the friction of the circumstances.
For instance, if you’re afraid to finish a project because of the inevitable rejection that will come once you start shopping it around, you might build your self-esteem by encouraging yourself with statements like “I am enough” on the regular. You might also do some exposure therapy with rejection by submitting smaller projects—with smaller dreams riding on them—to literary magazines.
Think Collages, Not Compartments.
Instead of seeing your old and new ideas as two concepts that should be kept compartmentalized and separate, what if you searched for their thematic, plot-based, or character-based commonalities to create a richer, more multifaceted singular project?
The Big Lebowski is not a movie about bowling; what’s more, the Coen Brothers didn’t reserve the idea of their characters in a bowling league for their next project after Lebowski. Instead, Joel and Ethan incorporated bowling as a fantastic metaphor that adds depth to a movie originally inspired by the works of Raymond Chandler.
When we do this, when we’re no longer prisoner to the random ideas and thoughts that flit across our brainpans, we allow ourselves to see that four ideas may not be four separate books, but may actually be smaller, though no less mighty, ideas to incorporate and mature into one really strong book that you’re working on in that season of your life.
Don’t Use the New Idea Yet; Let It Mature in an Ideas Drawer.
If you’re bored with old ideas, especially in light of shiny, new ones, don’t throw out all your hard work! Don’t throw out the new idea either. Instead, keep the new ones warm and waiting in a place where you can reach for them at the opportune moment.
Writers' rooms on TV shows often do this. They might have a physical or digital wall of stickie notes detailing random plot points that could happen to their characters. Maybe the ideas are right for the next episode; maybe for the next season. Maybe they're not even right for the series and never get used.
Take a page from their playbook. When you’re distracted by a shiny, new idea, instead of getting derailed by it, acknowledge the idea by adding it to a drawer, bulletin board, or grab bag file on your phone’s Notes app. That way, when new ideas come, you won’t feel pressured to use them so urgently because you’ll have a place to store them. As a result, they might be incorporated into your current project, as I mentioned above, or they might patiently wait in that drawer for you to be done generating your current project. You might even revisit the thought in three months and realize it wasn’t that brilliant after all. This way, you won’t be blown about on the winds of change every time you get another good idea.
Acknowledge the Productivity of Stepping Back.
I can’t emphasize enough how helpful it’s been for me to build breaks for literary growth and development into my writing year. There is so much focus today on productivity that taking time to step back and restore one’s self, to learn new things that can lead to more interesting ideas, can seem counterintuitive. But I think that doing so allows us to take stock of where we are in our writing life and work to push the boats out a little deeper.
So consider whether there’s a regular pattern to when you grow demoralized or weary of a book idea. Does it happen at a certain time in the calendar year? At a certain point in the writing process? How might you build in a break? How might you step back and appreciate all you’ve done from a bird’s-eye view, glean more information from your aerie, then hitch up your backpack and move forward?
I guarantee you won’t regret it.