Can a Writer Have Too Many Ideas?

I was never someone who was short of ideas. The blank page is a delicious invitation, a deep pool just waiting for me to dive on in. My challenge was always choosing one thing and sticking with it long enough to see the project through to the end. It wasn’t so much a case of Writer’s Block, but Writer’s Burial — as in, being buried in an avalanche of thoughts and inspiration.

Sorry, a lot of mixed metaphors (pools, avalanches, invitations, burials) going on there, but it has always been a bit of a challenge for me to settle down, choose a project (or a metaphor, apparently), and not get distracted by all the other gazillion cool things I could be working on. Writing projects were no exception. I’m great at beginnings. And, every new idea always seems like it’s going to be fantastic, the book that will write itself, the narrative that will be so compelling that Hollywood will come knocking even before the book is in print. Yes, I’ve always had a good imagination and a sense of optimism about the next big thing.

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling… right?

The worst years in terms of expressing this crazy sense of the possible were the teen years. From week to week I changed my mind about what I was going to do when I graduated from high…