Too Many Ideas and Not Enough Time

Right now, I have a bunch of posts sitting in my Likes folder because they’ve sparked some sort of story idea and I want to keep track of the prompts. The problem is, I don’t know which idea to develop, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have time to work on it.

I have this problem a lot. Typically, I have an overabundance of ideas and characters and stories in my head that all want to be written, but due to their clamoring for attention and the lack of time to give it to them, nothing gets freed onto the page. I’m left with a head-full of stories and no place for them to go. And people wonder how I can be so forgetful and daydreamy. Well, wouldn’t you be too if you had a head-full of stories?

Each idea that’s sparked from the prompts I’ve collected is unusual and intriguing, at least to me. They all could be worth pursuing. Or, I might try one and find out it won’t go anywhere, and then I will have wasted my precious time. I want to write, but so many things are holding me back: doubts like these, obligations to people both in work and at home, chores that have to be done (like making a psychiatrist appointment; oh how I hate talking on the phone)…oh, and did I mention work?

A year ago, I didn’t have a job. I should say, I didn’t have a steady job. (I was dog-walking at the time.) I could spend hours at home, at my desk, working on whatever creative project I wanted, while watching my favorite TV shows. Now I wish I had used that time more carefully. I wish I had that time back. But then I think, maybe that wouldn’t be as idyllic as it sounds. Maybe I still wouldn’t be able to write. After all, I would still have to choose which of my many, many ideas to invest in.

How do you decide something like that? How do you choose what story to develop, when you have so many?

 

~H