Sixten Linusson asked Michael J. Sullivan:

What do you do if you have a great idea for a story when you are already working on a title? Do you make them short stories?

Michael J. Sullivan Hey Sixten, thanks for asking. New ideas come to me all the time. One of the cool things about being a writer is I'm never out of ideas, and I'll die long before they'll all make it to the page.

I'm not sure if this is true for all authors, but for me my ideas are almost always "novel sized," and I can't really change the format to a short story and still make them work. When I do write short stories - I have to work hard to come up with an idea that is simple and succinct enough to fit in that kind of mold, and I actually find short stories harder to write then full novels.

All that being said, I don't drop a project to start something else, no matter how much I'm in love with the new idea. I may make a few notes to act as a reminder, but usually I won't have a problem forgetting about it. For one project, the entire thing came to me in the middle of the night, and I got up and outlined the whole thing. That's pretty unusual. That happened several years ago and I've still not written "that" book as other projects keep jumping in front of it. I do plan on getting to it soon though.

Thanks for asking.

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