Alexander Bennett

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Alexander Bennett

Nano Colony Discussion

18w

I keep coming up with ideas and not making them into full stories. How should I fix this?

M.A. Kropp: And that is the thing you have to learn (force yourself) to get over. If you always give in to the "new shiny" you will never finish anything. And if you really want to be a writer whose work gets read and enjoyed, the first rule is to finish what you start. You can have more than one project in progress at once, but you do need to limit that number. I generally have two in full progress, and maybe one in revision/editing. That way, I can schedule time for each, and not get totally bored with any one. Stop fooling around with new, new, new, and work on getting to the end of one. That's the only way it's going to work. There's no miracle solution. No magic formula. Sit down, and do it.

Alexander Bennett: I'll admit, most of this was rhetorical to drive some conversation here.

In addition to wanting to work on something new, there is also the timeframe issue. If you're looking into selling, your creative process needs to be shorter. GRRM gets away with writing a new story 'whenever' because he's GRRM (and pisses off his fans in the process) but a new writer looks bad if they come to a publisher with a novel they've been working on for years and years. I can at least say that my main project has changed significantly over that time to the point where if it became a major hit I'd be able to fill dozens of Buzzfeed articles about how the story was originally, but it makes it look like I take too long.

I also write scripts and those have a even shorter timeframe. One expert states that you should spend about a year on something you expect to sell. That actually strikes me as long, I think he was including paid rewrites as an established writer because someone just coming in doesn't really have the time to spend that much time on a single project. And with that expert in particular, we'd be talking movie, not a series pilot, which is A: a bit quicker to write and B: If you pitch it you need to be able to pitch the rest of the season and ideas for the following seasons.

The question becomes: can everything I write be about the same characters in the same world, or do I need to broaden my horizons and write about new characters in new places doing different things? Remember that once something is sold, it's bound to whoever I sold it to, whether a novel or a script, it and everything involving in it is now at the whim of those companies - if they decide it's not selling, the story ends - no self publishing even.

So really my question is more complicated that just "choose a project and write it" Because in the end, most of the project are the same project, in different forms and ways.

M.A. Kropp: Pick one. Sit down with it, either pull together an outline or just write a couple paragraphs that tell the story in general terms. Start with that, and begin filling in the details. Stick with it. It's hard not to get distracted by a new, shiny idea, but you have to force yourself to let them go for another day, and keep working on what's in progress. And to keep those in progress things to a minimum. It gets (slightly) easier the more you do it, but there is no simple solution other than to just force yourself to do it.

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Alexander Bennett

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Apr 22, 2016

Originally shared by ThinkGeek - 33 comments

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