Tuesday, August 5, 2008

So I'm cheating on my current WIP...

I am a bad girl. I am cheating on my current WIP with another story. I blame my SO for this affair. Tidying up some old papers at his request (he's the tidy one) I came across the first three pages of a story I started several years ago (based on an idea I'd tinkered with several years before that) and i felt all excited reading through it. Then I searched it out on my computer and the first 11,000 words were still there. Its horribly overwritten and a bit bodice-rippery but I like it. So I've been mulling it over and doing a little bit of revising when i should be working on my current project which my agent is trying to shop around for me.

I know its the wrong thing to do. My WIP doesn't deserve this treatment. What it does deserve is to be finished. It's at around 14,000 words (only 36,000 to go) but i've got all uptight about it because it has potential and I suddenly doubt my ability to realise that potential. You see, if I don't finish it, then I can't cock it up.

I don't want to mess up. Ideally I'd write both stories but I've never worked on two novels at once before. I've managed to work on different genre at the same time before - novel and short story or novel and picture book, but this is new. I have to finish the WIP. What to do?

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