Creative Overflow

[spiderboi]

I've been looking at the writing challenges and decided to actually participate for once. I've had a lot of good (to me) ideas, and I was getting myself hyped to get home and write all day: jotting down notes for various plots and characters, looking up stuff on the company dime, and just generally being impatient.

Now I'm in front of my computer, and there's too much. I want to work on Plot A, but Character 2 is calling me to work on her story; meanwhile, a book I've been waiting for that I need to use for research for yet another story just arrived, and that topic is super interesting, so the more I learn, the more ideas I have. On top of all that, I've got the tenth chapter in my favorite series about a month overdue, which I miss terribly

The creative juices are flowing, and the struggle is real. I figure other people have to have this problem. How do you choose what to work on when you've got a ton of ideas, two hands, and only twenty-four hours in a day?

 

[YmaOHyd]

I try to separate work time and thinking-time. If I have a story in progress, writing time is for writing. Ideas go in the ideas document or the Notes folder on my phone, and I'll mess with them when I have a moment or a need. If I'm going to think, I'll go for a walk or be somewhere other than where I write, if I can.

Good to have too much to do rather than too little. But the way it usually works for me is that I have analysis paralysis, then I just pick something. And if it was the right something I get into it, and if it was the wrong something the right something usually reveals itself at that moment. It's a bit like flipping a coin -- the result of the flip matters less than what you find yourself hoping for when the coin's in the air.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Well, for each story type I have different music I listen to. and my stories are really different for each other. So I either decide what I want to write and put on the music to help me focus.

But that's not working tonight. I might just need to take a night off tonight.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I've been looking at the writing challenges and decided to actually participate for once. I've had a lot of good (to me) ideas, and I was getting myself hyped to get home and write all day: jotting down notes for various plots and characters, looking up stuff on the company dime, and just generally being impatient.

Now I'm in front of my computer, and there's too much. I want to work on Plot A, but Character 2 is calling me to work on her story; meanwhile, a book I've been waiting for that I need to use for research for yet another story just arrived, and that topic is super interesting, so the more I learn, the more ideas I have. On top of all that, I've got the tenth chapter in my favorite series about a month overdue, which I miss terribly

The creative juices are flowing, and the struggle is real. I figure other people have to have this problem. How do you choose what to work on when you've got a ton of ideas, two hands, and only twenty-four hours in a day?

You're pretty much describing my entire experience. It's easier to dream than to start building, and these dreams tend to accumulate, thus you end up not doing anything and being all scattered. The problem here is that we're laying a million blocks to a million different plots of land and expecting to build a house. That ain't happening.

Struthless says more charmingly, I suppose. However, the solution for me is something that I came up with just during this month alone. It has two parts: deadlines, and hyperfocus.

What do I mean by deadlines? Well, having a deadline with high stakes actually work for me. That's why I love doing NaNoWriMo so much, and ever since last year I've been trying to push it up to see if I can reach to 50K before November 30th. I started doing that because I noticed that in 2023 I reached to 50K on the 25th, and last year I also reached 50K on the 25th, with the caveat that I went to 60K instead of going to 53K like on 2023. I haven't finished for the day, but so far I'm on 34K, so that's about almost 70% all the way through, but I'm digressing. NaNo, to me, is just an opportunity to run an idea that's been jumping on my brain, and the stakes are that I get a cool draft either started or done, ready to be revised and edited by the end of it, but it has shifted into a game. Still, I only have 30 days to do 50K, so that's a challenge with a deadline. The hyperfocus comes on, as you can see, the fact that I look into my progress, and the details, and treat it more like a game. Last week I noticed that my writing speed has improved. I'm now pushing 2K words in 60 minutes, coming from 1.5K.

Another deadline that I have is writing about the same thing for a year, which is a Struthless advice focused on drawing, from which the analogy of the blocks came from. I gave myself a few rules about it: the deadline is daily, just for a year. It is handwritten, in black ink. I'll be writing the stories in an A4 leaf, using both sides. If the space runs out, the story is over, even if it ends mid-sentence. I must write in English. So what am I still writing about? Schoolgirls, obviously. I chose the topic because it was the easiest for me: I don't have to do a lot of research, I used to be a teacher at a high school, I know how everything works, and I can be as edgy as I want. I just decided to abide to Lit's guidelines not out of self-censorship, but to add a bit more difficulty to the challenge. The result? Well, the schoolgirls started to fade into more of a background element, to the point that even someone in her 40s was using her old school uniform in one story. Aside of forcing me to write over and over about the same thing, and finding what I'm looking for in my writing, it has also allowed me to be more experimental, and to study the ideas that I also get attacked by every day. The NaNo I'm writing right now? I developed several stories using its themes and characters in it for a few entries; none have made it to the manuscript, but they gave me the knowledge of how am I going to write it. I've created characters that I plan to fully develop in future stories; some were born in this challenge, and others were plastered into this challenge to give them a chance to stretch out of their boxes. Since it's just two pages, I can do one of this in around half an hour, and there's a lower bar here. The stakes, again, come from the deadline. It's a daily effort that I must do for 365 days, and I'm almost through all of them as of now.

tl;dr, have a deadline, and focus on one single thing at a time, but if you have way too much ideas, maybe doing something like developing them for 250 to 500 words might give them a place to stay quiet, and you can go to them once the one single thing is done.

 

[spiderboi]

tl;dr, have a deadline, and focus on one single thing at a time, but if you have way too much ideas, maybe doing something like developing them for 250 to 500 words might give them a place to stay quiet, and you can go to them once the one single thing is done.

Oh, no! I'm the stupid donkey

I've only hit 13k this Nov with all my indecision, but someday I will hit 50k in one month. Maybe next month, if I can buckle down on my self-imposed deadline.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I try to separate work time and thinking-time. If I have a story in progress, writing time is for writing.

This is the way.
And during thinking time, I try to focus on the story I'm currently writing. It doesn't always work but I'll take some notes on the new idea and that usually allows me to refocus knowing I'm not going to lose the idea.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The creative juices are flowing, and the struggle is real. I figure other people have to have this problem. How do you choose what to work on when you've got a ton of ideas, two hands, and only twenty-four hours in a day?

When ideas bottleneck, point form. Just jot down point form notes as fast as you can. Even for multiple stories, open up your file for each one and jump from file to file as you need to and jot jot jot. If your brain is moving that fast just do whatever you can to try to keep up. Get the hay in while the sun shines.

That's what I do.