The good thing about having so many projects competing for mental attention is that if I get stuck on one or just don’t want to deal with it, there’s always something else I could be working on. I finished one phase of one of the projects, then just couldn’t seem to focus on the next one up, so I turned to the one that’s more of a “play” project.

And learned in a rather vivid way that it’s not quite ready for prime time. I created scene cards for each scene I know about and realized that although I have a lot of stuff about this story in my head, almost all of it is backstory. The backstory may end up in the book, since it’s a complete story, in and of itself. I may do it in dramatized flashbacks, a la Lost or Once Upon a Time, and that’s the part where I’m not entirely sure how well it will work. But once I get to the present, I have no idea what will happen. My chronological outline comes to a dead stop at the beginning of the story.

I can still write the backstory bits, and the fun of using Scrivener for this is that I can always rearrange the pieces. Writing the backstory may give me ideas for the present. But this idea definitely requires more development. It will have to remain something I do for fun in my spare time until I’m ready to devote serious headspace to it.

This is an object lesson in dealing with the Shiny New Idea. When you’re in the hard part of a book, any new idea is going to sound really great compared to the thing you’re working on, but if you drop what you’re working on to play with the new idea, you may never finish the thing you’re working on, and you may find that the new idea is just as difficult as the thing you were working on. Then you’ll get another Shiny New Idea, and so on.

I recommend taking a break to write down everything you know about the Shiny New Idea. That way, you’ve captured it so you won’t forget the good stuff. You may get it out of your brain so you can focus. And you’ll see how developed it really is. Usually, you don’t have enough to really start writing an actual book. If you do find it more or less writing itself, then go for it, but that’s pretty rare.