It was a busy anniversary week, but it was capped off by one of the most generous gestures my wife and I have ever experienced while working a wedding. Now, it’s time to get back to work. Today, I want to talk about the method and importance of ways to avoid shiny object syndrome. Welcome to Episode 9 of Revisited.
Drawing from the Well
No “official” changes here. Like I said in the opening, it was a busy honkin’ week. That’s not to say that I didn’t make any progress; it just didn’t make it into my trackers because I didn’t finish a chapter. I’m still working on this last new fill-in chapter. It’s good, it’s just dense and takes a lot of energy to write. It’s going to be a great chapter once it’s finished. I actually worked on it this morning and covered about two pages, which is a lot of words for under an hour. Hopefully, next week I’ll be able to say that I’ve moved onto the next step.
Pages 309
174,390/178,445 Words
Filling the Well
I didn’t finish any books this week. There was a lot going on and there just wasn’t much time to listen to books. Still, I’m far ahead of pace and just need to keep at it. More next week.
18/100 for #ProjectBookworm2024
WoW Patch 10.2.6 has been sort-of announced. Blizzard is keeping it a big secret, which is a first in a very long time. It’s pretty exciting. We’ll see what comes out of that in March.
Well Chat
On March 2, 2019, I hit a nerve. I talked about Managing Inspiration and talked at length about Shiny Object Syndrome. Here’s what I said and how my opinions have changed.
Shiny Object Syndrome is the condition, the compulsion, to fixate on something other than the project you’re working. Five years ago, I called it “the new thing that your brain wants to jump on and follow down a rabbit hole to figure out what it’s about.” This is still accurate. It comes up as your brain wanders. As writers, we have to let this happen so that we can generate ideas for our work, especially our current work. Brains aren’t inherently logical, though.
Yeah, we all have our squirrel moments. What draws our third eye away are those shiny ideas. It’s inevitable. It’s unavoidable. What do you do with that, though? Ignoring it just makes it all the shinier. Well, five years ago, I recommended that you “Ride the wave.” For me, this remains true today. If I can focus my distraction on my current work, things go really well. If not, however, I follow the same process. Take a few minutes (that’s less than five), follow the rabbit hole until you hit a dead end, and then stop. You don’t try to think yourself out of the hole you’ve dug. It doesn’t matter. That’s not what you’re working on now. Write down everything you thought of (effectively the map back to your dead end) and then store it for later.
This echoes what I said five years ago. Really, it hasn’t changed. At this point, I think of the most shiny ideas while I’m driving. At a stop light, I’ll text myself the nugget of the idea. Once I’m home, I follow it to its natural conclusion, document it, and file it digitally for when I have time for a new idea. I know, I haven’t had much time for those yet, but you’ll never know if you don’t hold onto them.
How do you deal with shiny ideas? Let me know on social media.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG