I have a confession to make. I am an addict. I am addicted to starting stories. When I first sit down with that beautiful shiny idea and my brain smells like a new car, its like an unbeatable high. The first few thousand words flow out of my mind, through my fingers and onto the blank page slicker than snot on a doorknob. The characters don’t just speak they sing. The setting is as clear as day, the plot moves like its on rails, and all is right and fine with the world.

Then inevitably it happens. Ill be 10 maybe even 20 or 30 thousand words in and it happens. I get another idea, and while I still like my current one, the new idea is new. It’s shiny. Its seductive and different and oh so clever. And so my work on the last idea starts to slow down, the characters aint quite so vivid, the setting not nearly so clear. So I figure, you know what? Lets take a break just for a little while, get the outlines of this new idea, the timbre of this new voice on paper, and I’ll come back to this. I’ll just bet you can guess what happens next. Yup. As soon as I’m 10 or 20 or 30 thousand words in, the next new idea strikes. And its new. Its shiny. Its…. you get the picture. Which is why I have a metric screw-ton of half finished drafts and not one completed work. Is there something wrong with me or does this happen to everyone? And much more importantly how do I deal with it? I’m specifically look for advice from all the successful authors (and by successful I mean you have actually finished something, possibly even published it) I am FB friends with or who might see this post on WP.