Project Envy

I get project envy. I'll be working on one novel or story when I'll have a great idea for another one. The idea is great, absolutely brilliant, and I absolutely can't wait to get started on it.

Except, I'm in the middle of another story. I don't like stopping a novel in mid-stream; when I've done it in the past, I tend not to get back to the first project for a long time, if ever. I have a number of quarter-to-half-finished novels either sitting in notebooks or my laptop, waiting for me to return to them. Among them is the second sequel to Attack of the Intergalactic Soul Hunters. I just gave up on it when my publisher turned the first sequel down. Others I stopped doing because the new idea I had was too good to resist.

I don't like to stop in mid-project, so many times I will file the idea away for later. This will be the next one, I tell myself. I'll get to it just as soon as I'm done the current one. But later rarely comes. If I don't jump on an idea that good immediately, it will fade in importance until it simply isn't as irresistible any more. Another idea will gladly take its place.

So, what to do? And is it even necessarily a problem? I know a lot of writers who will say they wished they had too many ideas to choose from. Well, if you want to get one project finished, having lots of other ideas can be a mite distracting.

Currently I am working on two projects, one of which I started a year ago, based on a false start I had a few years before that. It is a project I have put on hold many times in favour of other books (like Young Nostradamus and The Right Hand of Evil), but I'm now feeling drawn back to it yet again. It's called Cupidity, and it's a YA fantasy about teen love and suicide. I'm certain I will finish it at some point, but other ideas keep getting in the way.

Like my other current project, The 25 Demons You Meet In Hell. This one is about a high school bully who dies and goes to Hell, only to find it isn't a place of fire and brimstone at all. Instead, it is more of a spiritual rehabilitation centre, where he is shown the effect his actions have had on others. I like this project a lot, and feel I am doing some very creative things with it. But is it as good as Cupidity? Which should I give my time to?

Time will tell.