What Do I Write Next?

Writers frequently come to me and say: “I have three ideas. Which one should I write next?”

In the 90-day workshops, one of the first exercises we do is we write for five minutes, beginning with: “My story is about . . .”

And the writer says, “But I don’t know which story to write about.”

I tell them, “Just start writing.”

90% of the time, this does the trick. Your subconscious knows which story wants to be told next. You can sometimes get in the way with all sorts of noise about what you think the market is looking for, or trying to figure out which story will change your life and provide the quickest route to quitting your day job.

All of the stories will be told in time. You will get to them eventually. You may even discover that what you wanted to express in one story gets expressed in another.

The most important thing is to make a choice! Ideas are a dime a dozen. That’s the easy part. But they will never be anything more than ideas if you don’t sit down and pursue that story to the end. Don’t use your abundance of ideas as a reason to procrastinate.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you write. Your work guides you inexorably to a greater understanding of yourself. Since the purpose of story is to reveal a transformation, your work is simply a byproduct of your growth.

Just start writing.

Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.