Wow. You guys seem to be good at actually, er, writing. I have very little time to write, partly since I just don't have much free time in general, and partly because I have so many other hobbies. (Writing is, honestly, not a huge priority in my life.) So I tend to do as much work on my writing in my head as I can while I'm washing dishes or in the shower or otherwise occupied bodily but not mentally. Meanwhile, I also tend to be very picky about what projects I actually work on when I do have time to physically sit down and write. This is the main reason why I asked this question in the first place - I was hoping to find tips to help me sort through my ideas using my in-head time, determining which ones are worth spending my actual writing time on! But I didn't make this clear in the initial question. 
Lord Herobrine wrote: It's more practicality than anything
1) What is it
2) Is it alone or a part of something else
3) I daydream about it for a bit
4) I weigh my time
5) I usually discard it at some point, but if it's not I stuff it in my memory bank.
This sounds like my current procedure, except that I've started to write down most of my ideas, or at any rate jot down notes that are supposed to jar my memory about them. So lots of emphasis on in-head time (the daydreaming, determining if it should go with another idea, &c) and a minimum of actual writing (the writing down of the idea).
Mistress Kidh wrote: I've been writing books long enough that I know what needs to happen to an idea before I can write a book about it. I need to work out several things about the main character(s), work out the supporting characters that have structural roles, find the conflict, find the point of it, work out how it will.. go together and stuff. One of the questions I generally ask in the development file is 'will there be much poetry?' Because that's something I have to know. * shrugs * There are a lot of questions like that. It's kindof a loose development 'system', I guess. It's mostly just me knowing what works for me.
Good for you. It seems like different writers can have wildly different ways of approaching the same thing, and so a lot of learning to be a writer is just learning what particular methods work for you...and the only way to do that is to keep trying until you find the right one!
Mistress Kidh wrote: But I don't have a system for deciding what idea to work on, other than: do I really really like it? If I don't I don't work on it, and if I do I work on it after I finish one of my other projects.
I think I'm always a bit nervous that if I don't work on this idea I'm interested in RIGHT NOW, I'll lose interest in it and not want to work on it later on. So if I want to ever write out the idea, I MUST right away. This is a rather stupid frame of mind for me to have. I do have plenty of precedent of my abandoning ideas once I get bored of them...but I also have plenty of precedent of my returning to ideas that I've previously abandoned and improving on them.
You know, I think that basically I have two issues here that are making me want to carefully figure out what ideas to work on:
1) I don't have much writing time, so I want to use what time I do have as best as I can.
2) I'm afraid that I'll abandon my ideas and leave something half-finished (making me think that it was a waste of my precious time, which is not necessarily true), so I want to make sure that I'm really excited about an idea before I start working on it.
Issue #1 is a real issue. Issue #2 is mostly just me thinking stupidly. 
fantasywriter101 wrote: When I begin writing, I basically sit down and go. No outline, nothing. And this has yielded me many sales from Smashwords and Amazing Amazon. (BTW, Amazon isn't THAT amazing... as far as their KDP SELECT goes, Any thoughts?? 
Off topic, but I'm curious, what books do you have published on Smashwords and Amazon?
Constable Jaynin Mimetes wrote: You can tell from the complexity of the plot and the number of characters needed to carry it out whether it will take up a whole book, or just a few pages to tell the story in full.
Well, er, maybe you can tell. Right now I'm trying to finish up a story that I thought would be nice and short after considering what characters were involved and what things needed to happen...but which ended up almost getting to novella size (DID get to novella size if you count all the bits I've already cut out...). But yes. I get your point. I just need to get better at outlining if I want to be able to judge how long a story will be before I start actually writing it!
Varon wrote: I just start writing background and random scenes that appear in my head, and as I do that, I get to know the characters more and more and plot slowly coalesces around them and then I can guess at how long they should be.
This is basically what I do in my head when I have an idea.
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