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:

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.

My writer brain demands to know: Would J. K. Rowling have put off Harry Potter just because she happened to be working on some mediocre-at-best thing when the idea came to her?

Seriously.

Here’s the thing. I can almost guarantee you that in the course of writing Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling had shiny new ideas. That woman most definitely has a writer’s brain, after all.

The reason Harry Potter is Harry Potter is because J. K. Rowling stuck with it and finished.

She did not succumb to Shiny New Thing Syndrome.

And neither should you.

If it’s your goal to be a working, professional, successful writer, then you have to learn how to write through the middle of your story. It might feel draggy and saggy and boring. After all, Act II doesn’t have the brand-spanking-new thing going for it that Act I does, or the sliding-into-home thing that Act III has.

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