I've been finding it easier and easier to write about a single specific idea of mine, so I'll be working on that from now on and shelving a couple other ideas. This isn't really relevant to anyone else here, but since I've been more-or-less moving between three topics for the past few weeks I haven't gotten much of any one idea done. From this point forward, I'm committed to a specific medieval idea, so I should be posting an excerpt in the next few days. It just wasn't working to try multiple topics at once; nothing was moving along. Hopefully now I'll be able to have some progress.
Cool. Let's encourage each other on this...lol...I also have trouble finishing novels. It's so much fun to jump around and start new things, and it makes it hard at times to finish through the end of one concept.
Good luck with that. Writing gets progressively harder. Ideas are easy; rough draft is fun but work; revision is humiliating and hard; final editing is painstakingly boring. In the end, a "work" is completed, and readers are entertained and enlightened by way of your talent. Good luck.
I try to stick to one work in progress at a time only moving onto or back to another when I reach the stage where I need to put one down before rereading it or editing it etc. Find it much better - I stopped one project mid flow for NaNo and it annoys me it isn't completed and I now have an extra story in my head
yea it's better to work on one project at a time, but sometimes it's good to take a couple weeks off a project, and then get back to it with fresh ideas. At the moment, I'm working on a novel and a short story (and I have a couple of other ideas coming to me for both, but not working on them)
I'm still on a learning curve myself, but I would say yes, it's better to go as far as possible with one project, then when you're truly 'stuck' put it in a drawer first and do no writing rather than write something else. Only when you get inspiration for another story try writing that one; strike while the iron's hot. I used to have six, seven books on the go - surprise, surprise, NONE of them had endings. Weirdly I found publishing was a good motivator, to have that space on Kindle beckoning to me gave me the drive to push on, rather than having nothing at the end except the secret feeling that I'd finished a book, and no one was seeing it.
I've heard a lot of stuff about having too many ideas. That is decidedly not my problem. I only ever have one idea at a time, and often I have none at all. And of course, they never have endings. It's a huge fight for me to pick an end, which is probably why I've only ever finished 1 novella and a couple of short stories, even though I'm 19 and have been writing since I was 11. I'm rambling again; sorry. What I meant was that I'd be happy to read any excerpts. Something I wrote is vaguely medieval, too, so reading yours would probably help me a bit with mine.
Jo, that's my problem as well, but I usually don't get anywhere near the ending. I have the ideas though, and too many of them to consolidate in any productive way. I try to commit to an idea and see it through, but that's like having several kids and ignoring all but one of them. At least, that's how it feels. Some kids just have leave home, I guess, or be put in foster care. Sent to boarding school at least. Married off?
