what do you do with them?
Today's ushobwri post is about both perseverance and knowing when it's time to cut ties. On the one hand, we need to keep going as writers, to finish the story or the chapter or the scene or whatever. On the other hand, sometimes there are ideas that just...don't work out. Maybe you've lost interest in the story or the fandom, maybe you've hit a plot point block that feels impossible to get around, maybe it's something else entirely. So the question is when do you realize it's time to cut your losses and walk away? When do you say "This will never be finished" and accept that?
I don't actually have a folder of WIPs because my story files are not all that well organized and scattered over my hard drive (or GDocs these days). I do, however, have a lot of stories I always meant to finish someday but have mostly made my peace with not. Some of it's original - I had so much success with a world I created for an SGA universe that I started an original story that was set around that world, but I couldn't get it to work properly. I even scrapped what I had and started over and it worked better but it still didn't make me happy, so I moved on. I still have an original alternate future history urban fantasy thing that I swore I was going to turn into a real book someday. Many revisions and fresh starts later, I've tabled it because I finally realized I didn't know the story I wanted to tell. I had a lot of worldbuilding that honestly would have required a fuckton of research to get right, and I had a magic system that made sense to me but I wasn't sure how other people would feel about it. But I couldn't get a coherent narrative out of it, so it's on hold until or unless I get one.
In fandom, I can think of a few things I never finished, but the main one I gave up on was a story in which Tony was a part-incubus vampire. I was really into the story concept, but due to how I did some worldbuilding I couldn't give it a happy ending, so I despaired and gave up. Every now and then I think about it and wonder if it's worth reviving, maybe if I set it in another universe, but I still don't see a way for it to have a happy ending no matter what I do with it, just due to how the world's constructed. And yes, of course I could have written it with an angsty ending, but I didn't want to.
There are series I've written (Geometry and Pavlov) where I stopped and have never gone back to them. Pavlov got basically screwed by Hiatus, whatever season that was, and I wrote a first attempt at a fix-it but after that I wasn't sure what to do so I decided enough was enough. Geometry I mostly just lost interest in. I think the series ends at a decent point, but I wasn't planning on ending it, it just kind of happened that way.
I have a bad habit of losing interest in fandoms or stories halfway through, or near the end but not there yet. I've said before that the feedback and community I'm getting from AO3 with FF and WC is really the main driver keeping me motivated and working toward finishing them. Without that, I might have given up ages ago. I'm fortunate that I haven't yet found a new fandom or original interest to obsess over - I'm serially monogamous with my fandoms and I tend to abandon one for another when something new and shiny strikes my interest. But not watching TV has helped me stay focused on my current fandom. (The only two shows I watch I will never write fic for.)
I don't throw out any of my files. If I've written something, even if it's just a paragraph or a page, I keep the file. Text files (or .rtf files, or .docx files, or whatever) don't take up much room, so I see no need to trash them. These days I write in GDocs, so it's all cloud stored and doesn't take up space on my hard drive at all. I figure I wrote it, so I should keep it in case in three years I think "Hey, what did I ever do with X idea?" and want to remember what I actually wrote about it. Or I can use it for masochistic purposes and torment myself by how bad I was. (Oy.)
Not all ideas are good ideas, I'm just going to say it. I've had some truly terrible ideas that I tried to turn into stories and mostly failed, thank goodness. I'm also going to say that it's not my place nor is it my interest to judge anyone else's ideas; I've read stories with a totally bizarre premise that the author managed to make me believe. I've also read stories with a fairly traditional premise that were just so poorly executed I gave up. Hell, I'm writing two stories with premises that could really be seen as total crack, and yet I think I've managed to mostly pull it off.
I used to not read WIPs because I'd gotten burned too many times with authors not finishing or not updating for months. And at first I was really hesitant to post FF because I wasn't sure I'd manage to keep posting and finish it, and I didn't want to disappoint people. I've still gotten burned - there was one story I was reading on AO3 that I really got into, despite it having subjects I normally avoid at all cost, but the author hasn't updated in months and it makes me sad. I'm guilty of doing this myself - WTWB hasn't been updated in months, ever since FF started taking up more and more of my writing brain. I intend to finish it someday, but writing that story requires being in a very, very different headspace than writing FF or WC or the uni AU and it's not someplace that makes me all that comfortable.
I like to think that I'll finish WC and FF, and figure out something to do with the uni AU, and then maybe I can take a breather and figure out what I want to write next. Knowing me, I'll start another story after I finish FF, just so I have multiple projects to juggle (this way if I'm blocked on one I can go to another). But no ideas are really percolating in my brain yet.
What about you, if you've read this far? When do you say "I am going to finish this" and when do you say "This will never be done"?
This entry was originally posted at http://blueraccoon.dreamwidth.org/1220815.html. Please comment there. |
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I don't actually have a folder of WIPs because my story files are not all that well organized and scattered over my hard drive (or GDocs these days). I do, however, have a lot of stories I always meant to finish someday but have mostly made my peace with not. Some of it's original - I had so much success with a world I created for an SGA universe that I started an original story that was set around that world, but I couldn't get it to work properly. I even scrapped what I had and started over and it worked better but it still didn't make me happy, so I moved on. I still have an original alternate future history urban fantasy thing that I swore I was going to turn into a real book someday. Many revisions and fresh starts later, I've tabled it because I finally realized I didn't know the story I wanted to tell. I had a lot of worldbuilding that honestly would have required a fuckton of research to get right, and I had a magic system that made sense to me but I wasn't sure how other people would feel about it. But I couldn't get a coherent narrative out of it, so it's on hold until or unless I get one.
In fandom, I can think of a few things I never finished, but the main one I gave up on was a story in which Tony was a part-incubus vampire. I was really into the story concept, but due to how I did some worldbuilding I couldn't give it a happy ending, so I despaired and gave up. Every now and then I think about it and wonder if it's worth reviving, maybe if I set it in another universe, but I still don't see a way for it to have a happy ending no matter what I do with it, just due to how the world's constructed. And yes, of course I could have written it with an angsty ending, but I didn't want to.
There are series I've written (Geometry and Pavlov) where I stopped and have never gone back to them. Pavlov got basically screwed by Hiatus, whatever season that was, and I wrote a first attempt at a fix-it but after that I wasn't sure what to do so I decided enough was enough. Geometry I mostly just lost interest in. I think the series ends at a decent point, but I wasn't planning on ending it, it just kind of happened that way.
I have a bad habit of losing interest in fandoms or stories halfway through, or near the end but not there yet. I've said before that the feedback and community I'm getting from AO3 with FF and WC is really the main driver keeping me motivated and working toward finishing them. Without that, I might have given up ages ago. I'm fortunate that I haven't yet found a new fandom or original interest to obsess over - I'm serially monogamous with my fandoms and I tend to abandon one for another when something new and shiny strikes my interest. But not watching TV has helped me stay focused on my current fandom. (The only two shows I watch I will never write fic for.)
I don't throw out any of my files. If I've written something, even if it's just a paragraph or a page, I keep the file. Text files (or .rtf files, or .docx files, or whatever) don't take up much room, so I see no need to trash them. These days I write in GDocs, so it's all cloud stored and doesn't take up space on my hard drive at all. I figure I wrote it, so I should keep it in case in three years I think "Hey, what did I ever do with X idea?" and want to remember what I actually wrote about it. Or I can use it for masochistic purposes and torment myself by how bad I was. (Oy.)
Not all ideas are good ideas, I'm just going to say it. I've had some truly terrible ideas that I tried to turn into stories and mostly failed, thank goodness. I'm also going to say that it's not my place nor is it my interest to judge anyone else's ideas; I've read stories with a totally bizarre premise that the author managed to make me believe. I've also read stories with a fairly traditional premise that were just so poorly executed I gave up. Hell, I'm writing two stories with premises that could really be seen as total crack, and yet I think I've managed to mostly pull it off.
I used to not read WIPs because I'd gotten burned too many times with authors not finishing or not updating for months. And at first I was really hesitant to post FF because I wasn't sure I'd manage to keep posting and finish it, and I didn't want to disappoint people. I've still gotten burned - there was one story I was reading on AO3 that I really got into, despite it having subjects I normally avoid at all cost, but the author hasn't updated in months and it makes me sad. I'm guilty of doing this myself - WTWB hasn't been updated in months, ever since FF started taking up more and more of my writing brain. I intend to finish it someday, but writing that story requires being in a very, very different headspace than writing FF or WC or the uni AU and it's not someplace that makes me all that comfortable.
I like to think that I'll finish WC and FF, and figure out something to do with the uni AU, and then maybe I can take a breather and figure out what I want to write next. Knowing me, I'll start another story after I finish FF, just so I have multiple projects to juggle (this way if I'm blocked on one I can go to another). But no ideas are really percolating in my brain yet.
What about you, if you've read this far? When do you say "I am going to finish this" and when do you say "This will never be done"?
This entry was originally posted at http://blueraccoon.dreamwidth.org/1220815.html. Please comment there. |
comments