3 Ways to Combat Shiny New Thing Syndrome
Because you actually do need to finish what you start.
The struggle is real. Seriously. This happens to me every single time. I’m super excited as I start a new story. Act I flows like honey — not too easy, but sweet and smooth — everything is awesome. And then BAM! Two things:
- I hit Act II and my story slows to a crawl.
- Another idea — even more shiny and more new than the one I’m already working on (that almost definitely showed itself when I was in Act II of my last shiny new idea) springs up like magic.
When I was at my MFA residencies near Lake Tahoe, you couldn’t stand under the pine trees. Squirrels sat up in them, eating the good parts of the pine cones and then lobbing them at your head.
That’s what Shiny New Thing Syndrome is like.
And because I’m constantly fighting against my writer brain’s dedication to protecting me (and itself) from the hard work of actually writing anything, of course it seems perfectly obvious that the right decision is to drop everything and get straight away to work on that great new thing that just landed on my head and is going to be the thing that propels me into the career of my dreams.
