How Do You Know The Best Writing Project To Work On?
Too many ideas, not enough writing
You have several ideas.
Maybe you have some unfinished manuscripts on your computer. A few thousand words here and a few thousand words there.
You can’t decide what to focus on.
You get so far with one project, then you have another idea, which you think might be better. So you start working on that one instead.
Nothing gets finished.
You don’t know how to proceed.
You end up doing nothing.
I have two pieces of advice for you:
1) This is resistance
Stopping and starting with different writing projects, and not progressing any of them, is a sign of resistance. This is how your inner gremlin knows that it can stop your writing progress.
Your inner gremlin is controlled by your small ego which wants to protect you from hurting yourself.
At all costs.
We all have one and it operates it a way which is the most effective, just for us!
If the inner gremlin can bounce you around different projects, you won’t complete any of them. Then you won’t have to show them to anyone or put them out into the world.
Therefore, you can’t fail and everything will be nice, safe and controlled.
There is a twisted logic to the above.
But it doesn’t make you happy.
2) Imagine that there is no wrong idea
The only way you can beat that inner gremlin and feed your soul, is to start writing.
Pretend that it doesn’t matter which project you work on. Pretend that there is no wrong idea. They are all equally valuable and have equal potential.
You can’t make a mistake.
As you weigh them up you might find that one of them tugs on your heart strings more than the others. One of them would make you really sad if you never worked on it again.
And for one of them, if you never wrote another word on it, you wouldn’t be that bothered.
Pick the project that you’re most curious about and make some progress with it.
And tell that gremlin that you know that it is only trying to protect you, but could it kindly f**k off now because you have work to do.
Happy writing
Cali x
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
You might find the following articles useful:
How To Start Writing When The Inner Gremlin Is Trying To Stop You
Why It’s Sometimes Hard To Write, Even When You Really Want To
I have SO many projects and drafts of blog posts started. It does serve one good purpose: I get ideas out there so I have something to turn to when I don't know what to write about, especially for my blog or freelance assignments.
But then I have to force myself to finish pieces because resistance is real. First, keeping up on my Substack because I want to build a consistent audience. Second, finishing work I get paid for. Third, work on finishing ONE book at a time.
Good tip for ranking the projects. Thank you!