The answer for me is an unqualified yes. I know that when an idea for a story, a game, or any other sort of creative endeavor first arrives in my shriveled brain that is a window in which if I do not start working on the concept it will never become fully realized.

It doesn’t matter if I have taken the time to produce detailed notes or outlines the idea itself seems to go stale and lose life the more time passes between its inception and its execution. I have folders on my computer of half-started ideas that I failed to follow through on in time and are now adrift without direction or propulsion.

Curious enough this does not seem to apply to any concept that is executed fully and then set aside. If I write a novel centered on a concept and the set that novel aside, I can come back ten years later, re-read it, and its vibrancy is still there, but if it’s only an outline or a synopsis. Nope, that’s as dead a week-old corpse.

Because of that fact or limitation in my creative process I am plowing ahead on my novel without having a signed contract in my back pocket.

The work is not wasted. No writing ever is, it is all honing the craft, but also even if my editor and I cannot come to terms, and that’s an outcome I doubt we have a great working relationship, there are other houses and other editors so forward I go.