The Curse of the Shiny New Idea

The Shiny New Idea is a writing term when you’ve been working on a writing project and you get a new idea. So you abandon that writing project and starting working on that new idea. As you work on that one after a while you get another shiny new idea. So you abandon that writing project, and begin working on that new idea. Rinse and repeat.

I call that Riding the Carousel. You keep getting in a new ride, a new writing idea, and jump from idea to idea, a writing a new story, a new story, over and over again, and the ride never ends. A story, a novel, a poem, whatever the writing project is, nothing ever gets finished, does it?

Riding the Carousel.

That’s what I call the Curse of the Shiny New Idea.

I Rode the Carousel for 7 years (and will be 8 if I don’t finish/publish a novel this year) after I published my debut novel, The Other Side (you can currently only find it here). I couldn’t stick to my “next novel” after I had finally finished my first one.

Do I write a series? Another standalone? A middle grade? A young adult? Fantasy? Magic? Vampires? Werewolves? Magic school?

The possibilities were endless. My mind was popping off ideas left, write (pun intended) and center. New idea, new idea, new idea. Change my story, change my story. Different main character, new title, not a series, it’s a standalone, now it’s a series, changed my mind again.

The Shiny New Idea was definitely a curse. I literally couldn’t get off the Carousel. The dizzying spin of the ride was starting to make me sick.

I needed to choose one story and stick with it already.

So eventually, I decided to ask the people (meaning my close friends and family) what book they most wanted to read next. I made a document featuring a collection of opening pages from the current novels I had started that was almost 15k words long, and sent it out asking them to give me ratings on which one they all most wanted to read. Then with their replies, I tallied up which story got the most votes. Which ever one was most highly rated, I’d write that story.

In the end, I had to take the choice out of my hands and was the only way to forcefully pull me off the Carousel.

And with 5 novels in the running, and 7 people voting, I got one story that had 4 votes, and was higher rated than any other.

It’s a middle grade novel currently titled Powers, though like I also said, I think it needs a new title. It takes place in an alternate 90s-era world where superpowered people exist alongside normal people (called powers and norms).

My main character, the 12 year old norm Craig Applebottom randomly manifests his super powers from a norm into a speedster. He is forced to leave his regular 6^th grade class for Specific Purpose or colloquially known as Superpowers Classes.

There is a lot more to that, like building a superhero team of his peers to face a national threat of domestic terrorist powers.

Also, the entire story came to me while I was sleeping. It was a night I had seen the first two episodes of The Boys with my mother and sister. I went to bed. Then I woke up at midnight and I sat up straight in bed with the name Craig Applebottom in my head, and began writing like two chapters in the middle of the night.

That was in 2022.

Then instead of finishing the novel, I got a “shiny new idea” and started writing something else.

Well, the people have spoken, and Powers was the story they most wanted to read. So that’s the next A. E. Costello book you’ll see on the shelves next. And it’ll actually BE on the shelves because I won’t publish with Amazon’d KDP this time! Lesson learned.

Do you all ever “Ride the Carousel?” Have you been struck with the Curse of the Shiny New Idea? Get off the ride! Just keep writing and finish Telling Your Story!