Too Many Ideas?

Have you ever looked through your unfinished projects files, or those little scraps of paper with ideas scribbled on them, and thought, “What the hell? When will I EVER have time to get all these ideas written?”

What do you do with your “spare parts?” Do you save them for later when you just might have the time and energy to get that new piece started (and finished)? Do you attempt to incorporate them into a current work in progress? Or, do you abandon everything else and bang out a short story and hope that puts the idea to rest and allows you some peace while you finish your full-length novel?

I made the mistake of pulling up my ideas file on the computer and nearly fainted. There are so many projects at various stages of development, it almost breaks my heart to see them just sitting there gathering dust. But it was while I was mulling over several of these same ideas that I realized they hadn’t been finished mainly because as they stood, they weren’t the greatest ideas in the first place.

However, upon closer inspection, I realized many of them could be combined to form a solid novel with plenty of characters, story lines, and plot points and twists to keep it rolling from page one to the back cover. Once I was done combining that pile of starts-n-stalls, I had gone from approximately 20 separate items, to eight solid plots.

Not only did it save my ideas from becoming wasted space on my hard drive, by blending them, new life was breathed into stories I had given up for dead but hadn’t the heart to give them a proper burial. Now I’m very glad I didn’t hit the delete key.

How about you? Is your idea file too cumbersome to manage? Can you tie a few of them together to make something bigger and better? Can you breathe new life into old ideas and run with them?

-Karen-