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Q&A How do I get rid of my excess ideas?

One Choice Cuts You Off From All Others This is a common problem for authors since many writers begin writing because they are interested in a number of subjects. However, spending a lot of time ...

posted 7y ago by raddevus‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:11:16Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26985
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar raddevus‭ · 2019-12-08T06:11:16Z (almost 5 years ago)
 **One Choice Cuts You Off From All Others**

This is a common problem for authors since many writers begin writing because they are interested in a number of subjects. However, spending a lot of time with one subject makes you feel as if you are ignoring all the others. It's not completely true however, and that is why a notebook may help you with this -- to simply tell yourself that you'll get to those other ideas later, after you finish this one.

**Get To The Root of Your Distraction**

You may need to get to the root of the reasons that you are so distracted by other ideas.

**There are a few reasons why this problem may occur** :

- Your subconscious knows there is something flawed about the story you are writing and it's attempting to let you know, but you aren't picking up on it. This is not mean to sound mystical, but instead what I'm attempting to say is that our minds are amazing and are doing far more than we know.

- It is a subject that you really aren't interested in. It is possible that by the time you've written X number of words you've explored the subject to the level you find interesting and after that, there isn't much left. The subject (or treatment) simply isn't enough to build a story around and by the time you've written some you lose interest. It is what it is. Every Writer's Fear

- Every writer's fear is that s/he will spend long periods of time writing a novel that is completely worthless -- which no one wants to read and even the author believes is a waste of time.

To beat this, you'll need to convince yourself that there is value in spending time with the subject at hand.

Can you convince yourself that the writing is valuable, even if it is only valuable to you?

Here's another entry I wrote here at SO writers that touches upon motivations for writing that you may find interesting: [How to keep writing?](https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/22135/how-to-keep-writing/22151#22151)

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-03-01T16:30:12Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 3