Two Muses/One Story

I didn't realize that was two different muses, I just thought my muse was drunk again the last time this happened to me.

I had this happen with a short piece I wrote a couple of years ago. My solution was to write both versions and see which worked better.

OMG - I just decided that for my next novel I'd MAKE myself outline properly, instead of winging it as I've always done before. And now you're telling me that it's probably a waste of time.

What's a woman to do?

It seems you've hit place in the story where you are unsure about the best way to proceed. Perhaps it's time to take a step back and let your frontal lobes play it out in both versions for a while, kind of like considering the string of potential responses from two different moves on a chess board. At times like these, it helps to be practical, with a forward-looking eye on where you want the story to go. If you don't know where you want the story to go, or if the two possibilties are pointing in very different directions, maybe it's time to think it through before you waste time or energy agonizing about it, or writing in frustration. This is just a suggestion. Overall, I like to defer to the common sense approach to writing forwarded by Uncle Jim, although he may have different advice on this particular issue.

I hear ya. It can be agonizing. My heart tells me to go one way, and my brain says to go the other way. I'm sticking with my heart for now, which I think is the better story, though perhaps less marketable. We'll see what happens when I'm done with it.

Nope, I only have one Muse. He's really hot, loves to tease, and can't be trusted with the computer when drunk.

When he gets confused about directions, he plays them both out for me like little movies and I watch them each unfold, then decide which one deserves the Emmy.

Or are those Oscars?

I can never keep that straight.

Muses

I try to follow the story, rather than lead it. I let it go where the structure and the characters take it. I don;t outline, and I don't wing it. So, no, this doesn't happen.

Oh yes, you're not alone. This drives me crazy. I have trouble with all the millions of ideas in my head.

The thing is, when you buy a book at the bookstore it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It begins the way it begins and it ends the way it ends (exception: these alternate ending movies - yuck! what a horrible idea). You generally don't think of all the different directions the story could have taken while you're reading it, right? Well, as least non-writers don't.

But as the writer, you have endless blue sky. You have unlimited, infinite beginnings, middles and endings in your head and available to you to use. You have to choose the three that go together - and put them in the correct order!

I try to write bullet points from the beginning to the end to keep me on track. But of course, this can work against you too because sometimes straying from what you intended is what needs to happen.

Other personality types probably just go with the flow, they go where their story takes them. But if I do that, I can write 800 aimless pages that, in the end, have to be trashed.

Grrrr....

Tracy - everybody has different thoughts on this one. There's no right or wrong way. But I too told myself I would absolutely outline the next book before beginning.

It didn't work; I wandered off track pretty quickly.

My next try I'm going to put just 8 - -10 generalized bullet points together and see if I can follow them.

I have two muses fighting over two different STORIES right now, and a third one whispering sweet nothings about a third plot entirely. All this racket makes it awful hard to actually write anything.