Oooo, sparkly!

At any one point, I have as many as ten to twenty story ideas floating around in my head. This is the main reason I carry my trusty journal everywhere I go, because inspiration could hit at any moment and when it does, I have to jot it down lest the writing gods pluck it from my mind before it has time to solidify. As writers, we’re always enticed by the Shiny New Idea. The one that, above all others, flashes brilliantly like a comet ripping across an inky sky. We want to follow it, discover where it came from and where it’s going, and see what journey it takes us on. The Shiny New Idea is always distracting in that way, trying to pull a writer away from their current WIP with promises of “new” and “exciting."

Right now, I’m working on Bloodbird edits. I love this story. I really really do. But earlier this week a Shiny New Idea popped into my head. This idea caught me by surprise as it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever written. It made me nervous and thrilled all at the same time. So I jotted it down, and have since been scrawling more and more notes to grow the idea into a true story. But that’s all they are: notes. If I stopped my current novel for every single new idea, I would never finish a thing. My main focus has to remain on Bloodbird. Once I’m done with all my revisions, I will send it off to my Beta Readers and await their feedback. Then, and only then, will I start on the Shiny New Idea. When I do, you can bet another Shiny New Idea will surface. That one will have to wait in line until I finish whatever it is I’m currently working on, no matter how sparkly and pretty is seems.