Well, at the very beginning of writing fanfic for this fandom, I ended up making a plot list actually - like, I've wailed on twitter quite a few times about having. at least 85? or so fics that I wanted to work on. and at first, I just took those ideas and smacked them on the list, THE GOAL was to try to work on them one at a time ( and i'm very determined so i was like, UNTIL IM 30, WHATEVER )

any way, i tried to stick with that for a few months, and when the ideas came to me with the words, i usually ended up just opening up a new google doc, titling it with the prompt then writing down the scene that cropped up in my head, thinking if i had it settled and waiting, i could just continue and work on it another day.

THIS METHOD: I DO NOT RECOMMEND. because before i knew it, as AMAZING as it is to find these little treasures of things you once wrote and actually being incredibly delighted by it, because you're gonna go 'DARN, I WROTE THAT, THAT'S SO COOL, IT'S GENIUS' - its also. very cluttered.

at some point i had like. closes my eyes. 40 wip's as actual open documents, and none that i knew which one to work on next. it helps !!! to play roulette with them, when you're in the mood to write and you go through one by one and poke at whatever genius you had once upon a time. but if you keep up that method of writing, the documents will just add up and add up and add up and it feels a little exhausting.

so what i do now is, i have a private discord for myself :) in my discord, its just me, and i segment my things by whats game stuff and writing stuff, but in my writing stuff particularly, i have these channels segmented by 'ideas' or 'process' or 'concepts' - and what i do is that when an art piece inspires me, i put it under 'happy concepts' so that when i'm looking for fluff, i find it there. the same for sad or lore pieces. things that make my brain tick but no words come out exactly.

in my ideas, i put there specific ideas for fics i have, but these things don't necessarily have words that i can yet jot down. its the 'i want to do it, but i dont have the time or energy yet' server. in that one, i make Threads in the channel, segmented so that they're all combined based on whatever vague concepts i had in my mind at the time. its like just a whole long list of things i wanna include, just as a reminder to myself, but other then that its just messy random thoughts.

and then in my process thread, i put the pieces i'm Actively working on at that exact moment in time, things that i work to finish asap. and then i do Threads again, the same as ideas, i put my concepts BUT i also put my thoughts that come into my head when i'm working on it. the actual words. when i'm doing revisions and the words no longer fit, but i really like them, instead of outright deleting, i'll put them in the thread so i can at least have something to maybe utilize again for another day. or something to consider and compare, with my finished product versus my draft.

by doing it this way - it accomplishes 3 things:

1. my files are ordered. i no longer have numerous wip documents to sift through, those that are just empty and only have a one word concept that take up a lot more brain space then it should.
2. i can work on the go. i just open up my discord, scroll to the server and channel i need and can just put random words in even if short, eventually i'll have a nice big chunk to work on when im ready to actually do it.
3. i know what my current active fics are. because my process threads only pop up when i work on them, everything else gets archived until i'm ready to use them again. so they come in, come out, when i'm done, out of my mind. OR. still saved for when i just want to read through my things and see if anything makes my brain waves spark up.

i also just. really love the concept of not having to delete my words, you know? a lot of phrases or thoughts i had before, i hated deleting them because i spent my time on them. i worked on them. i had thoughts. full 4 page paragraph thoughts. and now they just dont have a space where they can fit. i used to put them in a google doc that was just like '?' and it was a whole mismatch of things from different fics for me to pick and choose. but that eventually reached 68 pages long and it was exhausting.

now i just put them in discord and i can pick and choose without the clutter. its very nice !!!

anyway dsahbdhas sorry for the long and very delayed response! i hope this helps, and i hope the discord method might eventually come to work for you too, if ever you choose to do it! though the mountain of ideas be large, it helps to gently get through it as best you can, and this is the most seamless way for me to go! 💜