A curse of the "Oh shiny..."

Well, I think I have a problem.

No, I DO have a problem.  The curse of the magpie's "Oh shiny," mentality.  While I was editing my fantasy novel, I started to read a noir sci-fi.  I picked it up after reading a list of sci-fi books and series that other sci-fi and fantasy writers said were good.  It has been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year and I just picked it up today.  When Gravity Fails is an amazing book so far, and I was sad to hear that the author, one George Alec Effinger, died many years ago and there are only two other books with  Marîd Audran in it.

But, the problem is now I have started to go back and re-work a sci-fi noir piece of my own.  At the moment, this is a story based on a setting in my mind on the planet Mars.  Yes, Mars.  I have a real love of the red planet.  It has nothing to do with Heinlein's adventure stories or Burrough's.  Something in my mind has grasped Mars as the location for the desolate, the broken and castoffs of Earth.  I would love to share more yet it is my rile not to share to much, least I tell the story and don't want to sit down and write it.

I think I will continue this story for a time.  I do know that there is a real reason for the "Oh, shiny," mentality.  At least, it makes sense to me.  It is a way for my mind to get out from under the burden of failure.  You would think a writer wouldn't worry about that until later.  One of the biggest fears for many writers, me being one of them, is the feeling that if I don't finish anything then I won't fail at anything.  I can sit on half completed products and think that I will get to them in time.

There are two ways to deal with this, at least for me.  One is to push through when I have that magpie moment again.  Something I tried to do with this fantasy story that I think might languish a little longer on the back burner.  The other is to re-read the story Snows of Kilimanjaro.  It is all about a writer who gathers and gathers things together and NEVER writes anything and dies.

The idea that I could die before anything of mine gets published is something that will motivate me.  Though it is a very morbid way of thinking and looking at things.  But, that is jst how I am sometimes.