…And not in a good way. Not in a self-discovering, ice-castle-making, singing-on-high kind of way.
I’m currently working on my second(?) novel(?) with double question marks, because the story I am currently writing I did not intend to be anything but a short story but, as stories often do, it took on a life of it’s own and recently passed 15,000 words with no end in sight.
And with no end in sight and a meandering fifteen-thousand word tale, I had an epiphany of how the story should have began. That beginning would change the whole story and I would have to start anew.
I know what I’ve written so far isn’t very good. I know it is directionless. I know it is something I was writing just to keep writing and prove I could finish it (eventually). And I know for that reason I should start over. But, that’s also the reason that’s making it hard for me to start over.
See, if you know anything about me you know I have been writing for 30 years, and only started finishing things three or four years ago. Yes, that’s right, nearly three decades of half-done stories, novels that didn’t go more than three chapters, and several that had tens of thousands of words…and then just stopped.
I just recently proved to myself that I could finish things. And I’ve only finished something so lengthy once (finished first draft of first novel in March of this year). So I’m afraid if I start over, I’ll be falling into old habits and this will just become one more thing I didn’t finish. I also know what I’m writing now isn’t that great, and what I would write, if I began again, could be awesome.
I’m frozen, a big ball of anxiety. I hope I figure it out soon, because I tend to only draft one project at a time.