Write Away

Yes, most of my 50 or so stories are on indefinite hiatus. I've worked on three the last two weeks. There are about another ten I have concrete plans to come back to.

When the multiple WIPs started happening to me I felt like a failure. It's hard to describe how much it affected me without sounding like wah-wah-wah. But I've learned to live with it. I've even started finishing stories again, although it required re-learning how to work.

I think one of the reasons it happened is my standards just got higher. Roadblocks appeared in my stories because I saw they needed work, whereas before I wouldn't have noticed. That's when my unrelated ideas have the danger of popping up.

Tricks I use:

- I get chapters out to another person, it doesn't matter who, it doesn't matter in what condition. Just to keep a forward momentum (instead of sideways onto something else)

- the 'future plot ideas' folders as above.

- I try to write in large chunks of time. I find if I write 16 hours in a row, then nothing for 3 days while re-charging, I'm much more likely to stay on the same path than if I write 4 hours a day for 4 days.

- These days, I never plot my endings. I find if I plot too closely, I've no reason to write it. I just decide what emotional notes I want to hit, then leave the details as a reward for myself for actually writing the thing.

So you organise your writing into active/active and WIP/finished folders? I've never thought of that. I file both WIPs and finished stories by genre.

Actually, I like the finished ones mixing with the WIPs. If I just looked at a wall of WIPs every time I opened Word I'd get depressed.