new ideas have to wait
I can't wait for November and National Novel Writing Month.
After mortaine suggested that I use my experience of seeing the dead body out my window as the begining of my nano novel this year, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. At the time I already had a vague idea invovling secret societies for a young adult novel. Then there was this suggestion and the idea suddenly began just little more solid.
Now I have this image of a strange old man in my head, and I know he fits in somewhere. I'm starting to wonder what my young heroine is going to do as things in her world begin to get wierder and wierder. Just how is she going to deal with all the problems that are coming her way? And why are her parents acting so strange?
This idea is continuing to swell in my mind, almost to the point where it's overwhelming current projects that I am working on. I know it would be easy to just drop everything and go to work on this new idea, but I can't do that. One of the lessons that I really need to learn this year is to finish the projects that I start. If I just keep leaping onto every new idea when it comes my way, then I'll never finish anything.
And I can't grow as a writer if I don't finish.
I'm not talking so much about my poetry. Although I have many unfinished poems in my notebook. Mostly it's the short stories that I never finish. I think in all my years of writing, I have only finished one short story to the point where it's publishable. Everything else has been either false starts or first drafts that have to been edited to completion.
Those completions are important.
So for now, the new idea will have to wait. And I will patiently wait for the right time to write the opening line: "There was a dead body outside". The new idea needs more time to solidify anyway.
After mortaine suggested that I use my experience of seeing the dead body out my window as the begining of my nano novel this year, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. At the time I already had a vague idea invovling secret societies for a young adult novel. Then there was this suggestion and the idea suddenly began just little more solid.
Now I have this image of a strange old man in my head, and I know he fits in somewhere. I'm starting to wonder what my young heroine is going to do as things in her world begin to get wierder and wierder. Just how is she going to deal with all the problems that are coming her way? And why are her parents acting so strange?
This idea is continuing to swell in my mind, almost to the point where it's overwhelming current projects that I am working on. I know it would be easy to just drop everything and go to work on this new idea, but I can't do that. One of the lessons that I really need to learn this year is to finish the projects that I start. If I just keep leaping onto every new idea when it comes my way, then I'll never finish anything.
And I can't grow as a writer if I don't finish.
I'm not talking so much about my poetry. Although I have many unfinished poems in my notebook. Mostly it's the short stories that I never finish. I think in all my years of writing, I have only finished one short story to the point where it's publishable. Everything else has been either false starts or first drafts that have to been edited to completion.
Those completions are important.
So for now, the new idea will have to wait. And I will patiently wait for the right time to write the opening line: "There was a dead body outside". The new idea needs more time to solidify anyway.