Choosing a new project
Feb. 20th, 2014 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarillia posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
write_awayHow do you go about deciding what to work on next? Does one just call out to you or do you have a process for choosing one?
Normally I can just pick one and work on it until it's done--though occasionally I end up deciding that I'm not ready to start the one I chose after all and it works better if I get back to it later--but lately I my mind has been all over the place and I can't decide.
Sometimes what I do is I make a list of my top choices and then I go through that list and make a new one out of my top choices from that list and keep doing that until I only have one left. But I can't seem to narrow it down this time.
Part of it, I think, is that issue of audience appeal I talked about before. Instead of basing it entirely on my enthusiasm, I can't help thinking about what might be most salable too.
Normally I can just pick one and work on it until it's done--though occasionally I end up deciding that I'm not ready to start the one I chose after all and it works better if I get back to it later--but lately I my mind has been all over the place and I can't decide.
Sometimes what I do is I make a list of my top choices and then I go through that list and make a new one out of my top choices from that list and keep doing that until I only have one left. But I can't seem to narrow it down this time.
Part of it, I think, is that issue of audience appeal I talked about before. Instead of basing it entirely on my enthusiasm, I can't help thinking about what might be most salable too.
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Date: 2014-02-20 06:09 pm (UTC)Last year I very reluctantly set my long-time work in progress aside to write my current novel because while trying to plan out the old project was making me feel stuck and lifeless and overwhelmed, the new one continued to feed me new ideas so persistently and made me want to sit down and write it. I felt guilty and scared when I decided to put my "if I can only write one story in my life it needs to be this one" to the back burner, but I decided it was time to listen to the other one, and it was a fantastic decision. Of course, the length I work with means that whatever idea I choose will strap me in for a long haul. So that's an increase in pressure.
Personally (at this point at least) I can't take audience appeal into account when it comes to deciding what to work on. For content within a story, I start to consider that, but if I'm not working on the story that has 100% of my enthusiasm behind it, the story won't happen.
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Date: 2014-02-20 08:26 pm (UTC)1. Adeline is a witch/demi-goddess who was cursed so that she no longer existed in the world so she spent centuries wandering the earth as less than a ghost, observing events but unable to take any action. She was cursed to stop her from interfering in the plans of a fellow witch. She breaks the curse and tries again to stop her plan.
2. Edina is a citizen of a newly discovered society that has been conquered by a more technologically advanced country. Some of her people have magic that can be used to create illusions. They use it to try to take down the newly installed government from the inside.
3. Galena and her friend Suzana live in the upper classes of society that has isolated itself on a mountain. Suzana has been obsessed with rumors about what's at the bottom of the mountain and she and Galena go to find out the truth. "The truth"= dragons.
4. Imani is a demon who is part of a private investigating firm that also includes a fairy, a water sprite, a revenant, a dwarf, and a kitsune. I have a series planned that is part high fantasy and part hard-boiled detective stories. The first story involves the disappearance of a man's sister that leads Imani back to the underworld that she escaped long ago.
5. The sea has been taken over by some malevolent spirits. Kaya is a pirate who takes advantage of the atmosphere of fear and often makes her victims think the spirits are after them. One of those spirits takes offense at her games and she tries to escape from its revenge.
6. In a world with elemental powers of the usual four elements (fire, earth, water, air), Lucetta has power over shadow. She gets accepted to an academy even though she can't afford it because they want to study her powers and she meets a girl with a similar power over light. The academics argue over what their powers mean and how they work while Lucetta feels she should be doing something useful and turns her attention to the war being fought outside.
7. Marketa's country has recently lost most of their land to an empire that is trying to take over the rest of the land and install a new leader in their capital. Marketa wants to help defend her country but she has a disability that makes it difficult for her to learn magic. She meets a woman who has lost a hand and learned to work around it who is willing to work with her and a group of others with disabilities.
8. Sanjana has fire powers that she was not always able to control so she keeps herself at a distance from other people and wanders around with only the bird spirit that is the source of her powers for company. Her power is discovered and blamed for a disaster at one village she visits and a team of assassins is sent after her to keep her from doing more damage. She manages to survive their assault and convince them that she didn't do what she was being blamed for and they work together to find out who really did it.
9. A mother comes to the church to say that she thinks her daughter's paintings show visions of the future. Vanora is on a committee that evaluates claims of prophets and she uncovers a conspiracy to take advantage of this girl's visions.
10. Yelena's family runs a funeral service. They have bone magic and it's an open secret that these powers can be hired out. Yelena secretly works against any job of theirs that she thinks is unethical (someone asking them to commit murder is not unheard of) but then she comes across a girl who wants them to kill someone who might actually deserve to die. She doesn't know if she should interfere as usual or if she should help her family this time.
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These are my top new ideas. I also have a couple that I've (just barely) started.
1. Marielle has run away to a temple to become a novice priestess to atone for letting her mother die. After she arrives, some problems with their healing magic start happening and she can't help worrying that it's her fault. They try to figure out what's wrong while she gets to know the other novices and comes to terms with her mother's death.
2. Greta has been treated for delusions in the past and when she starts seeing things and coming up with strange theories to explain them, she worries that it's happening again. There really is a supernatural problem but she can't be sure what is real and what is in her head.
And I didn't say it in my little summaries because it's not the main focus of the plot, but pretty much all of these involve lesbian romance.
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Date: 2014-02-20 08:40 pm (UTC)So I would vote for one of those. It's funny, I can see where I would start combining things if the ideas were mine (1&8, 2&7). I guess if I want to learn to write short stories I need to stop doing that so much.
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