Saturday 26 March 2011

What do you do when a NEW IDEA budges your WIP?

I am heading out to a Write-In hosted by Julianne Harvey who blogs @ The Dream to Write. She get's a spot for 12 writers, provides us food, munchies, coffee, tea (pop!), hook-ups for laptops. And from 9-4 we write. This time around we will be going for supper afterwards to talk writing and the writing life or whatever else comes up. It's a fabulous idea and this will be my second time going.

Speaking of ideas.

Last night.

Three characters walked into my imagination. I love them-it's almost overwhelming the push I feel to write about them.

Not really a problem. New wonderfilled ideas never are. Unless you have a book you are working on revising by the end of the month. There is the danger of, for me, losing steam for the old because the shiny new rolled into town.

So, I will give these three kids some writing time today-I mean , they may not carry an entire novel, I don't know, the push to discover their story is so great I have to at least scratch at the surface.

What do you do when new fab idea hits you in the middle of working on something else? Have you ever had one idea trump a wip and become the book that gets finished first?

3 comments:

  1. So glad to have you here, Deb! Can't wait to hear at the end of the day how you managed to balance your new idea with your WIP... :)

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  2. I spent several months working on a project and was only half way through the rough draft. Then a shiny-new-project hit me and I finally admitted I couldn't ignore it. Six weeks later I had a completed rough draft and now I'm loving my revissions.

    If you're under contract, obviously, you have to write what your getting paid to write. But if there are no contracts, I say follow your muse.

    Write what has to be written. Maybe after you give these new characters some face time and return to your old project you'll have the required distance and prospective to make your edits even better.

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  3. Hey, Julianne! I started off by writing the idea and characters out--so I could get past that initial powerful NUDGE and hey look at us! Once I'd done that I was able to focus on the wip.

    Thanks Kate---I wrote out some of the idea to see where it went and it kept growing (literally in leaps and bounds), so I am going to work on it, for all the reason you say. No contract so my muse is going to get to play for a bit. Yesterdays writing out of the characters and basic idea certainly relieved the pressure, lol!

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