How to deal with Attention Deficit Creator Disorder?

I have a lot of story ideas, but I'm also a natural procrastinator. I'll put the idea off until I feel like working on it, or when I think that I have a better idea or better hold on the story, both of which usually turn out to be never. Recently, I made a list of story ideas and settings I've come up with and the results were somewhat sobering: I have at least 25-30 separate stories, not counting the ones I've forgotten or the ones swallowed up by the others, most of which have never seen page one.

How can I fix this? How can I stay focused on one thing long enough to see it through , or keep the five other ideas bugging be at the same time from overwhelming me? And what do I do with the huge backlog of ideas?

edited 18th Dec '10 5:06:46 PM by Carbonek13

No clue! I've never solved this problem!

Edit: In hindsight that was really unhelpful, sorry. Um, have you tried making yourself at least write an outline, and filling in the gaps later?

edited 18th Dec '10 5:08:08 PM by Ultrayellow

Na No Wri Mo?

Maybe just set aside say a half hour every day in which you will write, no excuses. Or resolve to write at least a page of writing a day or something.

(Gee, I'm good at giving advice I myself don't follow...)

Carry around a little spiral notepad that you can write scenes down in immediately as they occur to you.

The furthest I ever got in Na No Wri Mo was 10,000 words. It always seems to end in Epic Fail for me, mainly for the reasons listed in the first post. I decide what story to do months in advance, but by the time November rolls around, I'm sick of it, and want to move on to something else, something that I feel I don't know enough about to do justice.

Wow Carbonek. I have your problem exactly... except I've never come close to 10,000 words. I've been working on one story for over a year now and still only have characters plotted out, no actual... anything written.

Set aside a time of day in which you will not be disturbed by anything except an emergency, even if it's just for half an hour every day. Then, since you can edit most mistakes later, lower your standards to rock bottom and turn out a chapter, scene, or paragraph. Do not edit until you are finished with the entire thing. When you are finished, throw a party and then work on shaping it into a proper story/book/whatever.

This is called "discipline", guys.

edited 18th Dec '10 7:13:40 PM by Slan

Has anyone else notice that the word discipline has lost all meaning a long time ago? I blame my parents, personally.

Anyways, I've got the same problem, big time. Part of it I think is just screwing up until you find your own personal method for getting through it, but in leu of that:

1. Write every day. Set a low goal that is unthreatening, don't stress if you miss a few days and get back on the horse, repeat until it is second nature. Do not be afraid if most of your words on any given day are filler or outright crap, you can worry about that later — see point #4. Also, keeping how much you did on a chart or a spreadsheet can help you keep things in perspective in the long run.

2. Ideas go in one box, stories go in another. I currently have two composition books, one being the everything else book, the other being the first-draft book. If you get a random inspiration that gets words flowing but has no story, even if its a later scene in a story you haven't written yet, it goes in the everything else book. If you're writing out an actual story, beginning to end, it goes into the first-draft book. Use whatever storage method feels natural for ether one.

3. Don't just write every day, but make progress every day. Pick a main project, one that holds your interest for more than a week or two, and dedicate yourself to it. A chunk of your daily words will be used not only on some random scene in it that you haven't written to yet, but to grinding out the boring scene you're working on now. The dedication to the main story also isn't about always throwing the good ideas to the wayside when you feel inspired, but instead being strict enough to not make them your goal. If you have time and energy, write the new ideas alongside your main story, but if you don't, you focus and go for your main project and crank that SOB out until its done.

4. Edit later. Do not — do not — keep editing the first few chapters before rushing onwards, because half the time you might decide at the end you'd have to cut them and otherwise butcher them anyways. Delude yourself into thinking they're perfect if you have to, just keep going.

Dec has it right.

Huzzah to Dec. Advice made of win and awesome.

Scale things down to chunks you can deal with. I found that once I had actually finished something, even though I had broken up the story into miniscule, chapter-like incriments, the internal reward for having completed something was enough to really buckle down on the next chapter of the same story. That said, the chapter (which is not exactly the correct thing to call them) has to be a whole. Plan it out. Outline it. If this is all that ever got written of this particular story, would it be worth reading? If the answer is yes, you'll feel fantastic. If no, make it better.

Also—don't try to hold on to something for too long. If your 'manageable chunk' was too long and you find yourself doodling characters from your latest idea all over the thing you absolutely have to finish— relax. Let it go. Set it aside and write the hell out of whatever is burning up inside you right this second. The completion of a chunk of that idea should feul you to continue that idea, and if it doesnt, move on until you find something that does. Also DON'T PLAN. DON'T DO IT. wait i just directly contradicted myself. Only plan within the chapter, further than that you can scribble down ideas as you have them, but don't go making complicated flow charts for something that, if you keep making flow charts, will never get written. You don't have time. If you've got a month or a week or a day to finish that chunk of that story, you had better spend that whole week writing it or you'll have nothing to show for it and you'll only be more discouraged.

edited 19th Dec '10 12:41:48 PM by DaeBrayk