Too many Stories on my mind

[OmnislashXX]

I kinda feel like I'm backed up. I have about 5 or six stories I want to write out, but while it's easy to just think about them in my brain, it's another entirely to write them all out. The process is slow and all I want to do is get them out. But I don't want to write all the time either. Anyone else have this problem?

 

[oggbashan]

Yes.

What I do is write the outline and put it in the pending file; write the next outline; file it and so on.

When I have written ALL the outlines I look to see which one inspires me to complete it first.

Usually it's none of them and I start yet another story...

I come back to the filed outlines a few months later.

 

[NotWise]

I kinda feel like I'm backed up. I have about 5 or six stories I want to write out, but while it's easy to just think about them in my brain, it's another entirely to write them all out. The process is slow and all I want to do is get them out. But I don't want to write all the time either. Anyone else have this problem?

Now and then. I make notes on the stories I can't get to and save them until I can.

 

[sr71plt]

I maintain a "project status" list in two computers (so if one dies, I'm not dead in the water on where I am with what I have). This means I have to formulate a tentative title early in the process. This method follows the whole progression from story ideas I can't work on at the moment through to publication. (The listing moves by highlighted segment through write/review/edit/cleanup/publish). Then I have another "new story" list where I keep track of what previously published stories/books are available for posting to the free Web sites.

If after a while if the kernel of a story idea isn't picked up and written from the project status list, I just delete it. Doesn't happen often, though. I usually get around to writing up a story. And I've never started writing a story and not completed it. If I take too long getting the kernel of an idea written to the project status list, though, I'll lose it. That's usually an indication the story idea didn't jell in my mind anyway.

 

[UnderMyKilt]

I kinda feel like I'm backed up. I have about 5 or six stories I want to write out, but while it's easy to just think about them in my brain, it's another entirely to write them all out. The process is slow and all I want to do is get them out. But I don't want to write all the time either. Anyone else have this problem?

I feel the same way. While I've always believed that "Unfinished work is a better motivator than unstarted work," it doesn't seem to be working that way for me right now. I don't profess to have anything approaching a systematic approach to story writing like some of the pros herein. So far, all of my stories have been true and write them when I have time to write, and when I have the time to reflect on and remember the events about which I'm writing.

Recently, some of them have also started as responses to a thread on the forum that get too lengthy, and too detailed, causing me to go, "Whoa...I better make that a story instead."

Thus, I find myself with about six in progress, with three pretty far along, and with my slightly ADHD brain causing me to jump from one to another. I need to get one done, and then move on to another, but my brain doesn't seem to work that way. Many years down the road, I also find myself editing and tuning up my old stories in no small part to make them seem more contiguous. I never intended to write more than one story, let alone make anything akin to story series, it just worked out that way. In between stories life got in the way.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgliV9I101k

its an old problem

 

[MindsMirror]

Yes, we have the problem. It's a good one to have. The issue is to capture the ideas while you have them. Write down the general plot and character features while they are fresh. Maybe even write a few detailed scenes. Then come back to it when you are more motivated.

-MM

 

[OmnislashXX]

Yes, I instead decided to come back to a story I am determined to finish. Going over the first chapter made me want to edit it again, even though last time I thought it would be the final edit. I think it's better and helps me gain the mind frame of the characters again.

Though the mental imagery conjured up from reading it over again is causing a bit of a different problem.

 

[sr71plt]

Yes, we have the problem. It's a good one to have. The issue is to capture the ideas while you have them. Write down the general plot and character features while they are fresh. Maybe even write a few detailed scenes. Then come back to it when you are more motivated.

-MM

If I'd gotten to the state of writing scenes or even writing down a general plot, I will just write the story. If I'm leaving it for later, I've noted nothing more than a tentative title, made a three-word phrase to click whatever I've conceive the story to be back into my mind, and, because I write under a lot of pen names, the name I plan to write that story under. I never have--and probably never will--write scenes out of sequence.

 

[NotWise]

I never have--and probably never will--write scenes out of sequence.

I remember doing that once, with the first long fiction I wrote. By the time I wrote to the point in the story where I planned to put the scene, it wasn't right and I couldn't use it.

It wasn't a total loss. I embellished it and posted it here last summer (seven years after it was written) as a stand-alone short.

That eventually worked out well, but I'll probably never do it again.

 

[sr71plt]

I can see where others might do that--and might have partial stories sitting around in files--but I'm not constituted that way. I'm very linear and am molded to list and complete projects and also not to slide over any part I don't want to do.

 

[DreamCloud]

I have many many starts. Books with the first few chapters written so I don't forget what I was thinking.

I tromp around them after I finish a story and try to pick the next project. Usually, I end up writing something completely new.

There's not enough time to write everything that needs to be written.

 

[sr71plt]

Oops. Posted to the wrong board.

 

[49greg]

My pending file is big, yet I often just add another to it. I could probably finish one if I didn't keep thinking up new ones.

For instance, all yesterday afternoon I've been thinking of another story, haven't written it down, and all day today, on and off I've been adding to it in my mind. It's completely different to anything I've ever done, yet I can't let it go. And I haven't even gotten to the sex bits. Or even a place to type in (If I ever start typing) "insert sex scene here".

Dammit.

 

[Hypoxia]

Scads of outlines, sequels, spin-offs, completions, and wild-ass notions await my attention. Writing isn't a job now so who knows when I'l get around to them?