I Need a Clone! (or two or three)

If you're like me, you have way more story ideas than you have time to write them all. A question that writers--both successful and struggling--get asked a lot is: Where do you get your ideas? If you're a writer the answer is simple--your brain is constantly "open" to receive ideas. As writers, we live, eat, breathe, sleep stories. Stories are our nourishment. If your passion in life is telling stories, then it's only reasonable that you are always thinking about stories--or at least programmed to receive stories.

I've been this way for years, and always I have a backlog of stories that pile up. Stories I know I'll never get to and never write. Sometimes it's frustrating. I'll be working on a project--like I am now, trying to finish my latest novel. And Bam! I get a story idea I just have to explore. Then I get back to the novel. Then Bing! Another story idea pops in my head. I have to follow it--like Alice down the rabbit hole. I can't leave it alone. What if it's "the one?" You know what I mean? The one true story that, once it's created, will live on throughout eternity as the greatest piece of literature known to man. Or at least the best thing you've created that you can hang your hat on and say with pride--"Yeah, I wrote that. Pretty good isn't it?" And feel a sense of pride that you came damn close to reaching that pinnacle of self-expression. It's not riches or fame we seek--it's the satisfaction of knowing we wrote a damn good story. That's what it's always been about.

Which brings me back to the clone dilemma. Yes, I need a clone. Not because I'm too busy to finish current projects, but because I have too many ideas floating around. A new story fills me with excitement. It's the excitement of wondering what this story is about, who are these characters, and what will happen to them. It burns inside you and takes you away from what you're doing and in the end you just have to tear yourself away and leave it alone and get back to finishing what you're doing. But it's like Pandora's Box sitting there in a corner (of your desktop). Waiting to be opened. Waiting for the secrets to be revealed. It's tempting. Too tempting. I don't know how other people deal with it. How does Stephen King deal with it? He had so many stories he had to create an alias just to get them all out.
I'm not as prolific as King is yet, mainly because I have to keep my day job, and mainly because, at heart, I'm a lazy bastard who has to force himself to write. But each month and year the stories pile up. At least I'll know the well will never run dry. But there's also the danger of the well spilling over. No one talks about that. The over-abundance. The spillage of ideas. Sometimes you go to the well. And sometimes the well spills over and comes to you.