Shut UP!
I was just approached to do an online read for the launch of the Nocturne paranormal line. It's always fun and good promotion (and nice money for how short they are) to do launches, so I said sure. But . . .
NOW my brain will not shut up. I have a million ideas for this short (five chapters) online read. SHUT UP! Because I have something more pressing (finishing my new novel). But you know how it is with a nice, bright, shining, new idea. The brain races and is so excited.
SHUT UP! There it is. Firing on all synapses. New idea . . . new idea . . . new idea . . . it's like my cursor, there taunting me. Write me! Write me!
Discipline. That's what's needed. But hey, I write in my pjs and procrastinate, and discipline has never been my strong suit. So there goes my brain. Taunting me.
SHUT UP!
Anyone else have this problem?
NOW my brain will not shut up. I have a million ideas for this short (five chapters) online read. SHUT UP! Because I have something more pressing (finishing my new novel). But you know how it is with a nice, bright, shining, new idea. The brain races and is so excited.
SHUT UP! There it is. Firing on all synapses. New idea . . . new idea . . . new idea . . . it's like my cursor, there taunting me. Write me! Write me!
Discipline. That's what's needed. But hey, I write in my pjs and procrastinate, and discipline has never been my strong suit. So there goes my brain. Taunting me.
SHUT UP!
Anyone else have this problem?
posted by Erica Orloff at 10:23 AM
15 Comments:
I don't have this problem any more, but I call it Shiny New Idea Syndrome. I'm not sure why, but I just don't any more. I do get new ideas whilst working on a specific book, and I do jot them down somewhere, but I don't have this urge to write something else.
We're talking about this everywhere, it seems.
Yes I have this problem but I call the Idea That Won't Wait Syndrome. I'm up to chapter 11 and if my family and pets would cooperate it would finish soon.
I'm not quite ADD, but... hey, what's that over there?
la:
Family and pets have a way of getting in the way!
E
milady:
I'll have to search for a cure.
E
Ewoh . . .
No wait! It's over HERE!
:-)
E
On a serious note, I truly have a problem with this. I call it the Shiny New Idea That Sucks As Bad As The Last Shiny New Idea So I Hope Tomorrow I Have New Shiny New Idea That Doesn't Suck As Bad As Yesterday's Shiny New Idea Syndrome.
I'm planning my dissertation around this theme. You'll be calling me "Dr. Hardin" any day now. :)
"Dr. Don Juan DeHardin," that is.
Dr. Don Juan De Hardin, Ph.D., Sir . . .
The trick, I have discovered, is discernment. Figuring out when the Shiny New Idea really IS something worth pursuing. Spanish Disco was a Shiny New Idea. I abandoned a book about a corrupt priest and a member of the IRA to work on Shiny New Idea and finished Spanish Disco in record time, and it became my first novel completed, AND it was snatched up by an agent and sold within weeks. However, with about 15 books under my belt, I have also learned that Lousy Old Ideas that I Am Slogging Through are very often just as good as Shiny New if I only stick with them.
Erica, Ph.D. of B.S.
Anyone else have this problem?
God, yes!!! Right now too, as a matter of fact. The villain in my book is demanding, DEMANDING to be the heroine of the sequel book. And since she's this bossy, arrogant chick, she's crowding my thoughts and insisting I write her book NOW. So I did, just so she wouldn't pull her AK-47 on me. Just a couple of pages. And ha! I got back at her. I wrote a scene where she was getting stinking drunk.
Karm:
Good for you! Now, maybe, let her have PMS and a bad hair day.
xo
E
Oh, yes. New ideas are especially tempting when I'm stalled on my current work. It's such a pain.
I concur, Dr. Orloff. :)
Caryn:
Those stalled times are the worst for Shiny New Idea Syndrome, as everyone seems to be calling it. I'm grateful I have enough books under my belt to know I can usually write myself through the doldrums of the middle if need be. Eventually, it lifts.
E
I think it's focus.
It changed for me the day I decided that I wanted to be good enough to get published. And if I want to get pubbed, I need to finish books.
I'm that way. If I've a goal, my mindset changes.
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