To Finish or To Start New; That is the Question

And that is my drama as we speak.

I want to finish my original NaNo novel so that I can get it submitted to Createaspace by the deadline in June to receive my free copy. This has been my main goal since I started writing especially since I didn't get my one from 2009 done in time to have a copy of that on my shelf. Yet with a just a few months to go I still don't have it finished and worse I feel as if it needs to be rewritten.

Now I am sitting here I am trying to decide if I should trudge through and finish that one even though I think it would feel like I did just that in the end or should I start the new novel that I have in my head. It is quite the quandary.

One one hand I really want to finish my original novel from November because is would be such a great feeling to actually finish it. Little known fact but I have never actually finished any of my own original work. Finished FanFiction I got coming out of my butt but nothing of my own. Plus to be well of 100k and not finish would be so disappointing.

However, I feel as if I might loose the story ideas for this new one if I don't get them down as they come. I have a tendency to forget the string of thoughts that I have if I don't write them when I have them. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be able to write the story later or that it wouldn't be as good as the thoughts that I have now but it would just probably be different from what I am thinking and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The third option which is the one I am leaning toward, is just to write what I have in my mind now and then when I run out of steam, story or both stop and go back to my other work. I think I could do this but my only concern is that they might be too close to the same idea for me to not confuse the two. I don't think I would but I can't be too sure.

Either way it feels good to be writing again considering I have been in a slump since the first of the year. Maybe now I can get back to all my stories that have been sitting on the back burner and finish them all this year. That would be a great goal. I like it!

Don't You Hate When That Happens?

I have been working on finishing my NaNo novel as well as getting started on a couple of other idea that I had floating in my head when something dawned to me; I think I need to start the darn thing over again. That's right. I am over 100K words into this novel and almost at the end and I think the whole basis of the story needs to be reworked.

I don't really know what it is but it feels like something I have read before and the characters, with the exception of the main two, don't feel like mine anymore. How does that happen?

I think the problem was that I had this idea in my head for awhile and when it first came to me it was based off a fanfiction that I had planned to write. I thought I had flushed out the new characters that I had created enough that it wouldn't still feel the same but it still does or at least it feels more like a remake of someone else's fiction than my own.

Don't get me wrong, I love my characters and I still want to write Shane and CeCe's story because I really think that would be something really different and maybe that was the story that I should have written last November instead of thinking that I should wait until the upcoming November to write it. I am just not sure and I think that if you aren't sure it shows in your writing.

I came up with a little bit of a different take on how to start the novel over as well as how to make the story different. Now the problem is the logistics of what I am thinking. I am not really sure that it can exist in reality. That is such a funny thing to say considering that my story isn't really reality based but I want to stay as close to real as possible. After all it does have to be believable if not achievable.

Now it is just a matter of finding the time to write it or re-write it whichever ends up working and then I can get it submitted by June so that I can have at least one copy sitting on my bookshelf.