Losing the love

[Teresa Edgerton]

One of the first things I apply when I'm stalled on a story is: When you can't go forward, to back. The idea being to find the place where (according to your nagging sub-conscious mind) you went off track. You might find that the problem begins early enough in the story that it will take a major revision. Or you might find that it was only a chapter or two before the place where you felt you couldn't go on. And the problem itself may be fairly huge one, or it could be surprisingly small and easy to fix. The smallest problem may get increasingly bigger the longer you leave it unfixed. If you find it now, and it's only a few chapters back, you may find an easy solution. Wherever you find the problem, if you are lucky the solution may charm you to such a degree that it will revitalize your interest in the whole thing, and it won't matter how much revising you have to do.

Or not.

You can never know until you try. If it doesn't work, you can always go back to being disenchanted with the story.

 

[DelActivisto]

If I gave it to anyone else to read now, I'd then have to kill them.

Honestly I feel the same way. Writers, for the most part, feel like a pretty "lone wolf" group of folks, myself included. I even have a hard time putting things up for critiques - not for the feedback. People can rip it up and tell me it's terrible and it won't change my mind. I might feel insulted, but it won't change anything. But more because someone might take off with my ideas. I guess I'm not very trusting.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Honestly I feel the same way. Writers, for the most part, feel like a pretty "lone wolf" group of folks, myself included. I even have a hard time putting things up for critiques - not for the feedback. People can rip it up and tell me it's terrible and it won't change my mind. I might feel insulted, but it won't change anything. But more because someone might take off with my ideas. I guess I'm not very trusting.

*thuds head*

I hear this fear so often.

It does not matter. Give fifty writers the same idea and not one of them will tell the story you will (go check out the writing challenge threads for evidence)

Also, you're up for critique. By writers. By obsessives with their own story to tell in their own world. Who have no interest whatsoever in adding to their to-write list for fear of their sanity.

Really. Your fear is unfounded.

 

[The Big Peat]

Ninjaed. I am 99.9% sure that 99.9% of authors have got more out of sharing and talking about their ideas than they have lost.

Although who you talk to matters a huge deal. I can understand a certain trepidation when faced with a new forum - out and out plagiarists do exist and rarely introduce themselves so. Just because we can vouch for everyone posting here doesn't mean we can vouch for everyone reading here. Then again, they do generally prefer the already popular for their affections.

That said, I do know what Harebrain is talking about. But my logic there is if you saw my prose and ideas in such a crappy form, I'd have to kill you out of embarrassment. (That's no specific you, btw).


As for collabs - honestly, I had a lot of fun and learnt a lot. I would collab again. There is an uncontrollable element in that none of us know exactly where our lives are going and sometimes people drift apart, or our tastes change, but that's just a case of risk management. I think the biggest problem for writers collabing is few of us are used to surrendering control that much. Well, unless we write sitcoms. I sometimes wish it was different, largely because I see so many authors where I'm like "Man, you do great plots with meh characters, and you do awesome characters with meh plots, like... couldn't you just work together and have great plots with awesome characters?" But there we go. Not saying there aren't downsides, but there are some great upsides when everything is aligned.

 

[DelActivisto]

*thuds head*

I hear this fear so often.

It does not matter. Give fifty writers the same idea and not one of them will tell the story you will (go check out the writing challenge threads for evidence)

Also, you're up for critique. By writers. By obsessives with their own story to tell in their own world. Who have no interest whatsoever in adding to their to-write list for fear of their sanity.

Really. Your fear is unfounded.

I'm sure there's a lot to said for critiques. I'll be posting a few critiques in a while when I finish my story. It's up to 102k words and I plan on taking it to somewhere around 135k. (Looking for a way to boil it down real quick, because that's pushing the publishable limit for a new book.) That said, critique boards offer problems of their own. "Writing by committee" would be one of them. Obviously author discretion solves that.

And I'm not saying I'm brilliant, or even unique, or whatever - but when you're writing with several central ideas that you've literally never seen anyone else do, well... that might be my selling point. I don't know one way or the other. Paranoia has served me well in the past.

 

[hopewrites]

I do come to a point with some stories that I work on that I call "end of the honeymoon" point.

At first it sounded like you had reached that point. Grown in a different direction from the written work. Grown in a different direction from your friend.

I think a chat about what the work is to each of you now would be beneficial. You could decide together if you want to stay married to it, or break up with the story and move on with your lives.

 

[Phyrebrat]

"Writing by committee" would be one of them. Obviously author discretion solves that.

And I'm not saying I'm brilliant, or even unique, or whatever - but when you're writing with several central ideas that you've literally never seen anyone else do, well... that might be my selling point. I don't know one way or the other. Paranoia has served me well in the past.

Yes, you must certainly use discrimination when choosing which critical advice to apply, but if you have a strong enough sense of your own story and world, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Writing - as far as I can see - is a long-game, step-by-step process. Thinking about your USP or getting published is immaterial to you at the moment. You might never finish the story afterall. It's going to be very hard to help you - and trust me we all need our hands held at some point - if you are keeping your story secret. Don't forget the crits are limited to 1.5k and I doubt any of your 100K will be given away in such a small sample.

Have you ever read someone's idea and thought 'hey, nice one, I'll steal that'? I doubt you have, so I'd worry less about it happening to you. It's the exception, really, and I'd ignore the anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

pH

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Ideas are not copyright.

 

[Vaz]

*Puts all the ideas back*

 

[RX-79G]

Ideas are not copyright.

There have been more than a few successful lawsuits for stolen story ideas:
Buchwald v. Paramount - Wikipedia
When Ellison Attacks

 

[Susan Boulton]

Sometimes, Big Peat, you can't regain the love for a story. Each time we write something a lot of outside influences play a big part. What is going on in out day to day life, our life experience at that point, friendships, work etc. Often there comes a point where, especially if you have been working on something for a long time, or try to finish something you put aside you find you can't go on with it.
It has happened to me, and the unfinished work still haunts me at times. I had an idea for a duology. Two stories that were interwoven with each other. I loved, and still do, the characters, I loved doing the research, I love the 50,000 words written of book one and the 20,000 of book two. BUT, I find it hard to open the documents. You see, the book was going to be my magus opus, my great work. I suppose it still could be if I got the courage up to finish it, but I can't. Not yet, maybe never. You see I was writing this epic during the last two years of my mother's life. If was a evil time. Not only dealing with the NHS, local care services, but a lot of personal baggage with regards to my mother and my late father. Now, each time I think of that novel, I tend to start thinking of that time, of the huge pit I was in, and how hard it was for me to climb out of it and turn my life around in so many ways. Maybe in a while I can be more objective, but it has been four years and I still aren't quite there.