Choosing a new project

[sarillia]

How 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.

Comments

[inevitableentresol]

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.

This is also one of my methods.

I am incapable of working on just one story, so I need many methods of dealing with this problem. The longest I've ever managed to stay on one project was 6 weeks at a time. I read the same way, several books at once, so it makes sense that I'd write like this as well.

I've tried to stay on one story, so hard, and just end up stopping writing entirely. So I've accepted this is how I am.

I have perhaps 30 projects on the go at any one time. Actually, many more now I think about it. Perhaps nearer 50. Of course, this is insane.

So I do what you do, and make lists. My current list has three stories, that is ones I've actively worked on in the last two weeks. That's manageable. I'll work on one story for a couple of days, switch and go onto the next, and then on to the third, and back, and so on.

I'd rather be the sort of person who can write one story all the way through, but it seems to be this or nothing.

One of the best tips I ever received was to note down the major plot points of each new story as they occur - key dialogue, character details etc. It doesn't me take long. Usually less than a few hours in total. Otherwise the new ideas nag away at me while I'm still steaming ahead on my other project and it's too distracting. If my new story summary is safely contained in a document, that helps me mentally set it aside until I'm ready to deal with it later.

And yes, my 50 story ideas are all very different, in answer to the other commenter above.

If you're the sort of person who also likes to write to-do lists before you go to bed at night, like I do, which help you sleep by getting buzzing ideas out of your head, that trick might also work for you.

I've heard that many writers have notebooks of hundreds of unfinished stories. And they value this, and return to it many times in their career. I've tried to think of my 'problem' as more like a 'treasury of ideas' but I've had limited success. I'm too envious of other writers who can focus.

When I started writing I had no problem deciding what story to write and sticking to it. It only became a problem several years in. Perhaps this is common?

[sarillia]

We definitely sound very similar.

I don't have that many projects going though. Technically I've got about 40 WIPs going but I have my WIP folder split into three subfolders and most of them are in the Inactive folder. I don't think I've had more than four or five in the Active folder before.

[inevitableentresol]

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.

[sarillia]

Whoa, I prefer to write in large chunks too and I don't plot my endings either. I have never come across another person, outside of some special circles of NaNo, who will write for at least 10 hours straight like I do sometimes.

I definitely like having my WIPs and finished stories separate though. It's a reward in itself to be able to move a story from the WIP folder to the finished folder. And there wouldn't be much of a point for me in organizing by genre since I write high fantasy almost exclusively. I could try to break it down into subgenres but I don't like to get too nitpicky about that.

[inevitableentresol]

It's a reward in itself to be able to move a story from the WIP folder to the finished folder.

I never thought of that. I need all the tricks of encouragement I can muster.

I might put a big COMPLETED next to my finished stories by renaming them. That might do the same thing. Or I'll try moving completed stories to a separate folder and see how that does.

Perhaps I could copy them instead of moving and get the best of both worlds.

I couldn't do NaNo because I need breaks inbetween my writing chunks for reasons of basic bodily health - mostly sleep. I write badly on little sleep. I tend to not only write gibberish, I don't realise that I'm writing gibberish, and I tend to edit over the good stuff I already wrote and not save a copy before I do it.

I've got to the point where I don't even bother opening Word if I haven't had 8 hours the previous night. I've spent so much effort in the past, writing my little socks off on not enough sleep, to only get to a point worse off than when I started.

If I've had a good night's sleep, on the other hand, I can pull over 24 hours of solid writing on occasion. I think I did 27 hours during one stretch last month.

Not editing though. I do that in smaller, more sensible chunks.

I write mostly sci-fi (or speculative fiction, as they like to call it these days since sci-fi is so uncool) and ancient historical AUs. So it's a little easier for me to break my writing down by genres.