Oh, the siren's call of a new idea. That first excited rush of possibility. For the last seven days I have been caught up in pursuing a new book idea. I've fleshed out an outline, developed a few characters, and wrote a three page synopsis. After working on a single story line for the past six months the change up has felt great. However, it has also been a distraction. I'm into the middle of my first novel, (aka TSC) and now all of these great ideas keep tugging at my brain that have nothing to do with TSC. Now the fear of never completing TSC is creeping in. For now, I'm letting the ideas come. Satisfying myself with just jotting down the concept. I'll give it a few more days and then dive back into TSC...hopefully.
So does anyone have some advice on staying focused? Is this deviation from TSC a good thing or bad? Let me know what you think.
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The only thing that made me finally finish my novel was ignoring all writing non novel related and just doing my 1000 words a day. I finished 100,000 words in 12 weeks exactly. My advice is keep the new synopsis and plough on with the first. Imagine how you'll feel when you finish! Just my feeling on it of course.
ReplyDeleteI'll respectfully disagree with Tina...
ReplyDeleteSometimes when I write I discover what it is I meant to say in the first place. I'm not interested in writing for product (ie a certain number of words a day up to a predetermined total). Some years ago I wrote out what seemed to me at that time to be everything I had in mind -- my entire story... then I walked away from it and did other things, only to discover that they all connected with the first bulk in ways I hadn't expected... this brought me to editing... I reworked the first into a few different stories, having discovered by writing other things that what I had wasn't, in fact, a coherent unit, but rather something that was held together by duct tape...
:D
hope you're well and that you're having a good year so far!
Thanks for the advice guys :) I think a blend of both may be just what I need. Allowing myself to dabble in new ideas, as long as I've met my daily wordcount for TSC.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jon so far so good...I wish the same for you and yours.