Hello all, I am a long timer lurker of this site and now after a bit of advise.
I have a few ideas in my head of what stories I want to do, some are screenplays, some are novels, however I am finding it hard to sit my self down and write. Then when I do write, I find it hard to pin my self down and concentrate on one story. Do any of you have a structure to your writing? Or a routine in which you do write? With working etc. I am finding it hard to sit my self down and when I do I feel like I am spinning some many ideas in my head that my fingers aren't able to keep up with my mind. I may be asking in the wrong place, but I generally want to sit my self down and create something other than half written notes. Any advise greatly received.
The only way I managed it was to write a plan (outline).
Take your time with this - I took about 3 weeks with the first - because like anything, the more time you spend in preparation the less correction you'll have to do at the end.
people write outlines in various ways but I based mine on word count. I needed around 100k, that's (very approximately) 30 chapters at 3k words per chapter. Each chapter needs an idea (scene, maybe?), and you can break that down again as much as you want. I wrote three sub-scenes per chapter and each had three further sub-sub-scenes.
One further advantage of doing things this way is that huge word counts get less scary. My breakdown meant each sub-sub-scene needed only 300-ish words. 30 lines. One pageful. Even I can write that!
Best of luck.