Major project shift

I’ve got this goal to finish my current work-in-progress, To Search the Starry Sea, by May 1st 2010.  However, the deeper I get into the story, the more I realize how many problems it has–how much it sucks, in other words.

Normally, this wouldn’t keep me from dropping the project or putting it on hold.  It happens with every rough draft (or second or third draft, for that matter); midway through every project, I start to get all angsty and worry that the project sucks, that it’s beyond saving, that I’m wasting my time, etc.

However, this time it’s different for a number of reasons.

First of all, the story itself doesn’t suck. However, it does have a weak beginning and a poor setup, which makes it very difficult to develop the middle section.  With better conflict foreshadowing and character introductions, I could tear right through this section, but without that, I’m floundering more and more.

A couple months ago, I started to realize this, so I started a set of revision notes for the next draft.  My thought was “if I know the story needs changes, rather than going back and changing them, I can just make a note of them and move on.”

However, that approach isn’t working because the unwritten changes aren’t impacting the story as fully and completely as they would if I’d write them out.  If the changes were minor, I could let them go–but when they have to do with something fundamental, like setting up a romantic subplot, or turning a minor character into a major character into a major viewpoint character, I can’ t just make a note of the change and move on–I need to write the thing to see what it changes.

In other words, I need to restart this project from the beginning.  But if I do that while I’m still angsty about it, it’s going to end up like crap.  I’ve got to let it sit for a while.

It’s frustrating, because I really want to finish a straight draft from start to finish.  For both Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home, I only finished the rough draft after dropping the project for a while and restarting it at the beginning.  If it works, I guess it works, but it would be nice if the creative process were more linear.  Blegh.

All is not lost, however.  Most of my first readers for Bringing Stella Home have gotten back with their feedback, and it’s been extremely helpful.  I’ve got a clear direction and lots of ideas for where I want to take that story, and now that I’ve spent some time away from it, I can honestly say that it doesn’t suck all that bad.  In fact, after a lot of work, it might actually be decently good.

There are several reasons why it makes sense to work on Bringing Stella Home right now.  For example,

1. I’m excited about it.  Better to capitalize on that now than wait until after the enthusiasm has died.
2. I’ve got lots of ideas flowing to me now.  I could try to write them all down for later, but why not try them out now, while they’re still fresh?
3. I’m sending Genesis Earth out to a bunch of places, and the rejections are starting to come in.  If I can respond to a rejection by sending out a second book in a timely way, I will look much more like a professional, and the agents/editors will take me more seriously.

My goal was to have To Search the Starry Sea done by May 1st.  Let’s see if I can do Bringing Stella Home 3.0 (and yes, the title will change) by that day instead.  And if that proves too difficult, what with graduation, internship, looking for work, and figuring out life, at least I can reach the halfway mark by then.

So that’s my new goal: Finish Bringing Stella Home 3.0 by May 1st, 2010 (or at least be halfway finished). To do that, I’ll have to read through all the comments by the end of this week and have the revision notes all figured out.

Better get started!