Q: Should I stop everything and focus on writing more for the songs I have? Should I just focus on trying to record stuff? I'm not really sure exactly what direction to go in, and this whole thing is feeling like a crisis at this point
A: talk it out, and you should start to see which way you want to go. new idea generation is always cool, you CAN continue to spend some time on that, however, if the guilt is killing you then you can suspend new gen for a while if it makes you feel more comfortable. If zero-record is kâilling you, then you can suspend all writing for a while if it makes you feel comfortable. Now, assuming you will record, choosing which one and which order is nearly impossible, especially for someone who 'cares' as much as i assume you do. I'm sure that every one of them has immense desire mixed with immense fear. this is normal. On one end of the spectrum, you could try to just go through the list and choose which one you 'fear the least', but this might actually make you pick the most boring one. You could do a brute force random, which means leave it to the computer to make a choice (count them up and randomize). And this may be a good idea but it also might not give you the best results. i've discovered that a hybrid method tends to work best for me, and it goes like this: go through your entire list, and pick out any one that excites you. and add those to a pre-selection list. And by the way, amount of writing completion shouldn't matter here. all of them are available, including ones at .01% writing. if it excites you, add it to the pre-selection list. Then, as soon as you finish the pre-selection list, immediately count them up and let the computer decide from there. and that's the choice. then finish the writing on that one, knowing it is the next one to be produced. then once the writing is done, then go into production. this hybrid method (half my choice, half random selection) has worked well for me for a long time, but, to be fair, that was long after i already figured out how to record a song. The problem i had earlier with recording songs is that it was too overwhelming, and what i actually had to do was write insanely short songs on purpose, so i could learn the ropes on everything quicker. so you might have to do that, if you are feeling overwhelmed with longer items. or who knows, maybe you won't be overwhelmed. but if you talk it out for a while, i'm sure you can come up with a great system that suits your needs. there are probably a million different schemes you could do, and the method you come up with can be something you are really proud of