Do Over

I think I've previously mentioned that I have 2 WIPs right now (and no, I didn't do NaNo due to my day job thinking it had a swing shift for the first part of the month). One of which is a Y.A. Sci-fi. The other is a general fiction that would be romance if the main characters ended up together, but I'm not nice enough for that. So that story is deemed "literary". And that's the story that is the inspiration for this post.

See, when I was a teenager,  I had come up with a place and a bunch of characters with an ongoing story.  I knew exactly who ended up with whom and who killed whom and...yeah...basically, this was a literary soap opera.

Recently, I had the idea to try and write that series and self-publish it as novellas. I wanted to go with the soap opera concept and have an ongoing story taking place in one city and have all the characters interact and be confusing as you-know-what. But then I realized, that's not very marketable.


So, I have to rethink my strategy. The thing that really made me feel comfortable in writing the first of the series was I saw a story. One that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now, even though I had an outline I was "supposed" to be following, I realized I had an over-arcing story I could use as the main storyline. It'll have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Also, it can stand alone as one story.

And with that, I have to pull a do-over. I have 2 1/2 chapters written in this random endeavor of mine. And the first, despite needing some revision, still fits. But the second pulls in a different point of view and a direction I may not be taking the story. Problem is, I could discard it and then rewrite a new chapter two (because chapter three would not make sense), I could discard two and my half of three and go the direction I'm seeking. I could edit chapter 2 to take it the direction I want.

In the end, I'm always worried that a do over will make things worse than help. I'm always worried that keeping things as they are is going to kill the whole concept. This is what I get for trying to write new and uncharted territory for me. Oh well.

Alien abductions are involuntary, but probings are scheduled.