Working has officially sucked away all my creative juices. I’ve been training for a new job for the past two weeks. It is intensive and boring. I don’t have the energy or time to write and I haven’t once thought about my w.i.p. In fact, I think it’s pretty much dead at this point. Too much time has passed since I fiddled with it, plus I had a dream about my character being a big ol’ pansy, so I’m thinking I need to start fresh. Finding the time to start fresh is going to be difficult, with two blogs and reading submissions. And kids . . . . yikes.
When do you know whether or not to abandon your characters and hop on another train? We’ve all heard the saying that more people start novels than finish them, so does that mean we should always stick with it? Should we follow through until our imaginary peeps get their happily ever after?
I want to know what you guys think. Have you ever given up on a project because of time constraints or personal obligations? When is it appropriate to start fresh? And, if you have set a project aside to start a new one, do you plan to go back to it later?
2 comments:
Sometimes, jumping ship is inevitable. To this day, I have 1/2 of a WIP in my file cabinet that will probably never see the sunlight again. It started off like all get go, characters were growing into themselves, blending with each other, all was well on the fictioin front, but on the home front... hard marriage turned into harder divorce, had to take a job outside the home, ecetera, ecetera, ecetera.... Today, I have forotten not only where I was going with it, but who the characters were. I refer to this in my blogs as 'distracted by life'. But, even though it happens and we don't want it to... I have found it usually yields many more story ideas than the one we lost.
I feel you when it comes to the creative juices going dry because your work sucks you dry. Another reason why I joined the critique group! I need some motivation.
I've abandoned characters before, but I say that with caution. Parts of them, or all of them, show up in other forms in other stories. Don't feel so bad!
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