We writers have countless story ideas

Our minds are constantly spinning up new, unique possibilities.

Maybe we have an idea for an innovative magic system, a uniquely diabolical villain, a tempestuous relationship, a flawed protagonist in need of transformation, or a perfect storm of natural disruption that tests the mettle of all beings in its wake…

Enlivened by these new ideas, we daydream on the drive into work about how to develop our concepts. We fall asleep making notes about how our readers will fall in love with our characters and consider how best to trickle out the details to hold them spellbound.

In this heady period of reflection and simulation, we can’t wait to attack the keyboard and start pounding out our story.

Inevitably, though, like restless children waiting in line at a carnival, we rush forward when only the crack of a single gate in our mind opens.

We then breathlessly begin banging out words.

At first, the narrative flows.

The scenes we’ve been obsessively considering pour right out with vim and vigor. We're getting our thousand words a day done with minimal cognitive dissonance, and it feels good… rewarding… right.

But soon, the sands begin to shift. We can't figure out how to finish a scene, so we abandon it with a “TK” and move to the next one.

Something about a character doesn't feel right, but we forge ahead anyway, confident we’ll fix it in a future editorial pass.

But the narrative weeds keep growing.

With every nettle we rip out, three more emerge.

Somewhere deep into the middle of the manuscript, all those weeds begin to entwine and slowly suffocate our enthusiasm.

But we tenaciously stick to it.

The only problem is that we’ve lost the throughline of what we’d initially set out to accomplish. Soon, questions about our intentions multiply faster than the narrative weeds.

Do we forge ahead, knowing everything we are writing will probably be a casualty in future drafts? Or do we go back to the beginning and retrace our steps to figure out where the story went off the rails and fix it?

We suspect you know what happens next…

At these all-is-lost moments, a fresh, brand-new story idea pops into our head, one better than the inertial mess we’ve been disentangling, with more potential. Soon we find ourselves convinced that “Yes!” this new idea is what we should be spending our time on. This is the one we will be able to finish.

So we stick the “old” manuscript in the metaphorical drawer and start up a new one, desperately pushing away the fact that in the back of our mind we know we’re doing the same thing we’ve always done, and as the old saying goes…

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”