How does one cope with multiple ideas syndrome as a writer? How can it get narrowed down and focused to just one idea?

This can be difficult.

My primary goal as an author is to write whatever I want to write, with a secondary focus on writing what I think my readers most want to read, and a tertiary focus on writing what I think will be most financially useful to me.

This set of priorities leads to some odd decisions at times, particularly because the decision is also strongly influenced by what I think will be fast to write versus slow. For me, everything in my Tuyo series is fast and everything else is average to slow. For me, fast means writing 120,000 words or more per month; average means about 60,000 words per month; slow means 30,000 words or so per month.

Also, I expect everything in the Tuyo series to be most financially useful to me, everything else less so, with standalones or anything connected to a traditionally published work least useful in a financial sense. That is, I can’t effectively market a sequel if the publisher still holds rights to the first book. That doesn’t mean I won’t write a sequel, but it does mean I have to really want to.

So there is a fairly complex interaction between what I most want to write, what series or standalone most needs a sequel for artistic reasons, what series or standalone most needs a sequel for reasons of profit, what I think will be fast and easy vs slow and more difficult, and what I think will be most financially useful overall.

Here is an example:

I have two longish ongoing sequels, one of which needs to be completed (Black Dog) and the other of which is going to go on forever, probably (Tuyo).

Last year, in September, October, November, and December of 2023, I was working on a book called Silver Circle, which was meant to be the fifth and final book of my Black Dog series. This project needed to get finished — the fourth book came out a few years ago — so I was working on this pretty seriously, but it was stretching out. In December, I decided that obviously this project was going to have to be at least two books, maybe more, and that it was going to take a good long time to finish.

“A good long time” meant that if I kept working on it, I wouldn’t have a new book to bring out early in 2024, which was not great. Not bringing out a new book for six months? That’s a long time. Also, the project was just frustrating because it was stretching out that way.

Therefore, I set aside Silver Circle, and on January 1st of 2024, I started Marag, the eighth book of my Tuyo series. I finished Marag in 18 days, had it revised and ready to go by the end of the month, set it for preorder in April, and started the ninth book of my Tuyo series, Rihasi, on February 2nd. I finished that in April and set it for preorder in July.

Then, much happier because of these two books either out or scheduled, I went back and picked up Silver Circle in June.

I worked on Silver Circle over June, July, and August, finally finishing the draft in late August. The draft went to 350,000 words without the epilogue, which I haven’t written yet.

I cut the draft into three parts because, I mean, obviously three is about the minimum for that length.

It’s halfway through September of 2024 as I type this answer. I’ve just barely finished primary revision to Part II and I’m starting secondary revision of Part I. I expect I’ll be releasing all three books of Silver Circle in November, but it could be December depending on feedback from early readers.

This year, when everyone else is taking on NaNoWriMo, I will probably be taking a break, because, I mean, good Lord, I will have earned a break.

After this very long and rather difficult project, I’ll want something fast and fun, so I will throw away all other considerations and write another Tuyo-world novel, which will be the tenth. I expect to pick that up in December and finish it in less then a month.

Then I will most likely finally write a sequel to a current standalone SF novel.

And then we’ll see.