So many ideas, such little time.

Full marks for sharing. I doubt you are alone in the experience.

Your reasoning and thinking and conclusion seems solid enough to me. A novel doesn't exist until it's finished, and of course we feel we are learning all the time.

Some of us are fortunate in not having to face enforced breaks. I was lucky enough to be retired and therefore had a complete run at my first novel but I can understand how an enforced break could interrupt the flow.

Starting new projects is something some folks can handle and still complete a novel. Doubt if I could switch between projects, but …

Decision has to be yours and I'm sure you'll make the one that suits you best, but focusing on and finishing one novel seems a pretty good idea.

Good luck, and congratulations for getting 60,000 words down- that should have taken you well into the story.

My gut says, I would keep going with the first one, as you have limited time and are more likely to have a finished book at the end of the summer, more likely to get into editing (which teaches you so much), and you seem to like it and have retained excitement about the plot twist.

UNLESS, you are actually massively more excited about book number two and believe it to be far superior. In which case, you'll probably be plagued by it the whole time you try to finish the first.

I guess I'm no help at all

As for my own experience, I believe the book that I've only written three chapters of to be better (I've planned it all even if most of it is in my head) and more marketable than my finished manuscript. I could mass query my finished one and forget about it and focus on the next. Buuut, I don't believe I've done all I can to make the first the best it can be, so I'm dedicating months extra to improving it, and the reason for that is simply that my mind won't let me move on, I couldn't if I tried, it wants to stay obsessed with the first. I would ask, which book do you think about in the shower, before you go to sleep etc?

relletyrots, you DON'T have "so little time." You've got so little time right now. Whichever story you set aside will exist--especially if you save conscientiously--for later. And you've got plenty of "later" to look forward to.

Write what interests you now, fueled by the confidence that you could return to the other project if you wanted.

If you don't finish it, you won't finish it.

Oh yeah. This is my world.

It takes a supreme case of willpower to not put an mostly finished book down and chase the new idea. All of your brain machinations are exactly what I go through. I have finally learned how to turn it off, sit down and just do the work to get it done.

Because, as you discovered, with time and distance, what you thought wouldn't work, what you thought was a pale imitation...really isn't. You're just hitting story fatigue. That's what I call it. I'm tired of it and I want something else to do. Gut and muscle is the only way I know to get through to the end.

A few things I try to remember when I hit this place:

1. I'm not a good judge of my writing, what's good or not, while I'm in the middle of it.
2. With time and distance, I always come back to the fact that I'm not a good judge of my writing.
3. I'll never get anything finished if I don't just muscle through it. This is not the same as recognizing that a plot/story/character element isn't working. This is pure story and attention fatigue.
4. Muscling through it gives me the satisfaction of having completed something, even if in my mind it's pure dreck. That sense of completion allows me to set it aside and work on other things.
5. Coming back to it, I realize, like you did, that it's not near as bad as I remember when I was in the middle of it.

So...nope. You're not alone.

I'm actually in the same situation you were in right now, since I had four story ideas:

1. A prehistoric blob whos head caught on fire learns how to deal with the other blobs who are following it around for some reason (the one I'm currently writing since blobs are adorable, dependable, classless mascots that I can milk use whenever I fall into hard times)
2. A chief inspector of the national police has to investigate an increasingly elaborate string of high-profile terrorist attacks from an oddly campy terrorist organization in a Singapore-esque authoritarian 2030 Indonesia, all the while quietly witnessing their increasing viral praise from his illegal VPN.
3. Two friends who recently broke apart after a spat independently discover the lost souls of lovers, who asks them to help them reunite with each other by letting them use their bodies, unfortunately the possession can only last for 5 minutes per day. (Inspired from the concept of Awakening characters in Honkai Impact 3)
4. The creator of a prehistoric cult based on human sacrifice is forced to sacrifice their only child by their own followers after a string of bad events leading them to believe that the only way to save the cult is to sacrifice them. (literally Yae Sakura's backstory)

and then after my visit to Japan I got inspired into a fifth one:
5. While reporting a war correspondent decides to go off the beaten path to track down the arms dealer that's supplying both sides, just so she can satisfy the curiosity she had since she was a child with arms dealers, and throughout the journey she reminisces on her childhood and why she truly became a war correspondent in the first place. (based on a joke "what if" scenario I had where Tomoko from Watamote becomes a war correspondent)


I got confused at first on which story to do first, but then I decided that after story 1 I'd retrofit story 4 into the Blob universe as a distant sequel, since story 1 deals with prehistoric tribalism, so it wouldn't be a stretch that centuries after the blobs would start engaging in animism.

Then, I ordered the rest based on difficulty, with easiest to hardest being the order which I'd write them:
Story 3 is the easiest, since it's a pretty innocent romance story that can use Kimi No Na Wa as a refrence.
Story 5 is the middle, since not only it is a character study, I'd also have to make up a new backstory that pays homage to Watamote but is still original.
Story 2 is the hardest, since I'd have to find a way to convince the readers that it's somehow believeable for the internet to like a group of "stylish" terrorists enough to start making memes about them and eventually produce enough international pressure to get them free from imprisonment.

relletyrots said:

Sounds cool, NoirSuede! I wish we both find the right path (although you seem to have already found it ).

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but just like you I can't manage time properly haha...

FWIW, I've learned that there are two places where I personally tend to bog down in a novel: right around the one-third point, and right around the two-thirds point. If you're 60K into a 90K novel, well.... It may be that you've discovered a natural stumbling point in your process.

It takes effort to slog through those points. It doesn't necessarily mean that the story's dead, just that you need to do it the hard way for a while. It does, IME, get easier again. And if you don't learn to do it, you may find yourself with a plethora of two-thirds-finished novels.

Unless there's some really compelling reason to jump ship, I'd say finish the first novel. You talked about how much you learned writing the first 60,000 words. Well, finishing a novel is a whole 'nother experience from writing even 60,000 words of it. Even if the completed story isn't satisfactory, what you'll learn from writing the whole thing through all the way to the end will be worth it. And as you yourself noted, it'll likely be better than you think, and there's always editing.

And then you can write the next idea. Because there will always be a next idea.

My opinion, after having recently finished a project, is to finish your 60k novel. For me, starting new projects and getting pretty far into them was all I'd ever done. I was left with a bunch of not-finished stuff I couldn't really do anything with. But once I finished my novel, I felt a renewed energy. I felt excited. I felt confidence like you wouldn't believe. I'd FINISHED A BOOK! Having a finished draft means you can start the process of editing, revising, and making it into something ready to share with the world. Now that I've finished my first one, I'm not afraid anymore to start a new project, or of getting far into one and losing steam. I've done it before; I can do it again.

A lot of good advice here.

To throw my own in, I'd say that you should finish the book you already started. I know how you can get tired of a project and become fixated on a shiny new idea, but you were excited and confident about your original idea at some point. You were able to put out 60K words, and you're considering putting it down. Are you sure your new idea will be any different?

(No?) One finished novel is better than 2 half finished novels. It will give you a sense of completion and you will have something that you can improve, through edits and re-writes, until it's the best you can make it.

(Yes) If it's really that great of an idea, you will still think so after you finish up the final third of your first novel. Finish it up, shelve it away, and you can dedicate all your attention to this new idea. If you learned so much over the course of your first book, think of how much more advanced you'll be after your second. Then you can go back and polish up the first.

Personally, I really hate abandoning a story (or any other project for that matter). I only do it under the most dire circumstances. I also find that it sometimes takes me a while to get back into a story after a break but a few hours of writing usually gets me right back in the zone.

Liz_V said:

FWIW, I've learned that there are two places where I personally tend to bog down in a novel: right around the one-third point, and right around the two-thirds point. If you're 60K into a 90K novel, well.... It may be that you've discovered a natural stumbling point in your process.

It takes effort to slog through those points. It doesn't necessarily mean that the story's dead, just that you need to do it the hard way for a while. It does, IME, get easier again. And if you don't learn to do it, you may find yourself with a plethora of two-thirds-finished novels.

Unless there's some really compelling reason to jump ship, I'd say finish the first novel. You talked about how much you learned writing the first 60,000 words. Well, finishing a novel is a whole 'nother experience from writing even 60,000 words of it. Even if the completed story isn't satisfactory, what you'll learn from writing the whole thing through all the way to the end will be worth it. And as you yourself noted, it'll likely be better than you think, and there's always editing.

And then you can write the next idea. Because there will always be a next idea.

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(bolding mine)


ALL OF THIS.

I hate middles. Middle suck. The middle is where I hate it all and want to set it on fire and every new idea seems sooooooooo much better than the crap I'm working on. Once I push through, I fall in love with it again and I can make it to the finish line.

So I, too, would vote for finishing the first one, and then BOOM you've got a finished novel, at which point you should celebrate and rejoice and pat yourself on the back. (We'll not discuss the work that comes next. LOL)

Liz_V said:

(....) Well, finishing a novel is a whole 'nother experience from writing even 60,000 words of it. Even if the completed story isn't satisfactory, what you'll learn from writing the whole thing through all the way to the end will be worth it. And as you yourself noted, it'll likely be better than you think, and there's always editing.

And then you can write the next idea. Because there will always be a next idea.

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I also think the experience of finishing something i.e. actually making the overall structure work, as opposed to a pile of words which may or may not work as parts of a larger whole, is of supreme importance to any starting writer. So, in this sense I vote for "always finish".

Concerning losing emotional connection to material due to enforced break: George Simenon famously said if he's forced for more than a few days away from his book, he abandons it and starts a new one. Since most of us are not super prolific geniuses, I'd rather suggest finding ways to bridge the emotional gap. Not by trying to regain the previous feeling, but by building up a new feeling. Making the book work through new goggles. I've done it.

Thirdly, sometimes there comes a "cut your losses" moment, when, in order to save both sanity and book, one decides to cut X number of storylines and/or scenes and/or characters, and take what's left and simply slaps on some variation of a more or less satisfying ending. In the sense of "I'll try to make the next book brilliant, but I'm still finishing this one, with lower expectations and fewer resources, but I'm finishing it and soon. It won't be brilliant, but it will teach me basic competence."

***

Now for some generic babbling.

Wild inspiration is good at the start, but you can't cling to this as a standard by which to measure if you should continue with a project or not. Or many other things in life, for that matter, including relationships, jobs, study, and such. Some people do try to maintain constant ecstatic enthusiasm by writing while high or drunk, but that's self-sabotage in the long run. The purpose of the initial wild inspiration is to get the ball rolling, not to be there the whole time. You'll curl up in an adrenal gland depletion crash if it really is always there. And if you keep pushing on regardless, the endocrine and nervous systems start crashing next. Spontaneous or artificialy maintained, protracted mania is not good for health, although from inside the ecstatic enthusiasm bubble one of course feels immortal and untouchable and forever young and whatnot.

Wanting to always feel ecstatic enthusiasm about X, any X, is like always wanting to be gloriously drunk or always in love at its most intense initial period--an understandable desire, but one of the skills of navigating adulthood is, IMO, knowing how to juggle pleasures, and not only the hard-hitting ones, but also the milder, more nuanced ones, so that the end result is a string of bubbles of various types of joy (as long as the external world allows it). As opposed to always either getting a sharp high, or desperately trying to find the sharp high. That's junkie behavior.

The point of the Big Bang is to start the universe, which then continues by other laws, you can't just have a Big Bang which is constantly there forever.

So, after the initial enthusiastic boost that was the seed, the primal mover, it's time to switch to other techniques of maintaining interest and joy in the process. Pride in craft level, for example. Making sure the scenes are smooth page-turners. Bursts of prose which make you purrrrr as you reread them. Inserts of opinions into the mouths of various characters. Stuff like that. Starting a project in a flurry of manic enthusiasm is one thing, but once it starts taking shape--time to switch to half a dozen or more milder techniques for enthusiasm and joy. IMO.

I'd personally go with your gut on it. If you feel very strongly that the second story is the one you're really into and you'd only be doing the first out of obligation to finish it, then I would go with the second and come back to the first afterwards. If, on the other hand, you're still very interested in the first and it's just that the second is a novel idea, it might be worth going with the first and getting the first draft done.
I've got 14k into two stories before starting a third and sticking with it, just because I wasn't in the right place to write the other two well, but I can easily go back to them afterwards (and then I've already got 14k done for each of them). In the end, really it's about doing what you think is right for you and your writing.