The one thing I have never suffered from, as a freelance writer was the lack of things to write about. Things to write about surround me. Ideas pop out at me at every step I take. Take the last trip I took with my wife to her favorite arts and crafts store, Michael's, as an example. My wife is an avid knitter, an expert knitter with over fifty year's experience. She spends a great deal of time at Michael is looking for just the right yarn for her latest project. The last time we were there, a couple of weeks ago, she was seeking out just the right Christmas yarn for the Christmas stockings that she was knitting and I was occupying myself with people watching when my eyes fell upon the lettering on the side of a large, yarn tote, "So Much Yarn, So Little Time To Knit." There was also a picture of a girl rushing about with a huge ball of yarn in her hands. My first thought was what a great Christmas gift that the tote would make for my two oldest grand daughters whom my wife is teaching to knit when they come to visit. It would be a great place for them to store their supplies and projects, making it easy for them to tote them from their home in the low lands to our home on Walch's mountain. Then, as my mind often does, I found myself seeing the words, "Too Many Ideas, Too Little Time to Write About them," and the idea for this article was born.

Many writers suffer from just the opposite problem; they set down at the keyboard and stare at the blank screen on their computer with no idea about what to write about. There are ways of handling that problem too but that is another idea for another article, another day. Today we are going to explore some ways to handle the problem that we will call the "Too Many Idea Syndrome," or TMIS for short. TIMIS was a real problem for me until I discovered a few steps that I could take to get it under control. Let me share a few of them with you here.

? The Red Dress Theory: Anne JaLeigh Sheway-Bryant proposed that at any given party that there will always be more women wearing "little Black Dresses," than there will be women wearing "Little Red Dresses." According to Anne, the women wearing the "Little Red Dresses" stand out from the crowd and garnered the lions share of attention. When faced with too many ideas to write about we can apply Anne's Red Dress Theory. Which idea stands out like a "Little Red Dress" in a sea of "Little Black Dresses?" when you find that one, that's the one you will want to write about.

? The Stupid Idea Theory: Tim Bete, author of Guide to Pirate Parenting, uses this approach to overcoming TMIS. He once said during an interview, "If you keep thinking about a stupid idea over a long period of time, it may get legs."

? The Idea Grows Legs: one of the things that I have in common with Anne is that I often think better when I'm on the move. When TMIS really hits me hard, depending on the time of the year and the weather conditions, I get out my ATV, dirt bike, or snowmobile and go for a long ride over the mountain trails. I have a very good friend, a city gal, who handles the same problem by going for long jogs with a pocket notebook and pen tucked into her shorts or Jeans.

? One of the tricks that I learned while attending the University of Phoenix as a distance learning student was to create a deadline for an assignment even if there really wasn't a real deadline looming on the horizon. Having a deadline looking me in the face, even if it wasn't a deadline set by the university, I was forced to decide on one idea and then stick with it.

? The award-winning screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb, who has sold 70 screenplays, compares writing ideas to making homemade soup in her kitchen. She once told an interviewer for Writer's Digest, "Think of your ideas like pots on the stove in the kitchen of your creative mind. Lift the lids and look inside. One of them is always closest to being soup. Write that one first."

? When facing with a real bad encounter with TMIS, write about the one idea that elicits the most passion in you. That is one of the reasons that the genre of erotica is so easy to break into. I mean sex generates passion in every relatively normal guy and gal, at least every one that I have ever encountered.

? Use GANTT Charts to organize your projects and the dates by which different phases of each project must be finished in order to meet the final deadline for each. A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some Gantt charts also show the dependency (i.e., precedence network) relationships between activities. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line. If you don't have project management software loaded on your computer you can accomplish the same thing by using writing out these project dates on a large desk calendar.

Well, there you have it folks, seven great way to overcome the TMIS. Try them all on for size and I'm confident that you will find one or more of them that will work for you.