Jeremy C Kester

In keeping with the suggestion I made for myself in my post, “In The Numbers”, I am going to go over the 4 excuses that Dean Wesley Smith listed in his own article that inspired the aforementioned post.

In this post, I’ll go over the 2nd excuse:

“Excuse #2… Where will I get that many ideas? (I really can’t help you.)”

This one is an easy one for me. There are no excuses for me here. In fact, my problem is the opposite: ideas are plentiful. My issues that arise here are more like: what idea am I going to chase?

But being spoiled for choice can often be just as debilitating as having no choice at all. Having so many ideas and being equally excited about so many makes it tricky to pick out the ones that are going to be more worth working on, because, let’s be honest, even if I was super prolific, I won’t ever get to them all. More will pop up as I clear out other ones. It’s one area I never had issue with.

I do get where many would wonder where they would get ideas from, though. It happens when we scan out too far. It is like the idea of wondering how I will achieve 1000 words a day on December of 2025 when I can’t even tell you what I’ll be writing. Or that I will need to write a total of 365,000 words this year in fiction to achieve my goal. As one zooms out too far, it becomes clear that they are eating an elephant, rather than just eating the bite of food in front of them. Views from that far out become daunting.

Focusing on one step at a time is the solve here. You only need one idea to move forward for today. During the many days working on that idea, the next idea might come, but it is only due when upon the completion of the first idea. And so on goes the next idea and the one after that. One idea at a time. That’s the way to move beyond this excuse.