Must finish the novel... Must ignore shiny new story ideas...

The writing process is a curious thing.

The novel that I loved enough to spend countless hours and a year of my life writing, now exhausts me. I'm not sure if the better analogy is a baby chick getting worn out pushing through the egg shell to experience the elation of a finished project or crossing the finish line of a marathon only to get hit by the cement truck of editing. 

It's not that I don't enjoy the process of perfecting a novel. I do. I really do. But I think I would enjoy it just as much if it wasn't...so much.

That's why the promise of that next idea is so shiny and alluring. All that potential; the plot twists, the humor...the next story is just going to write itself. With no editing needed, probably.

This is why the next idea is so lethal to the nearly completed project. It promises all the excitement and passion of a carefree paramour when I'm bogged down with the hard, rarely glamorous work of editing. It's easy to remember the great writing days putting together a first draft. The words just flowed. The plot twists fell onto the page like manna from heaven. 

But if I'm honest, the first draft days weren't always so easy. If they were, I wouldn't have watched a thousand hours of YouTube videos to inspire me to finish it. As is so often in life, I think this is a case of the grass is always greener on the other side. I have a sneaking suspicion that when this novel is done and I'm on to the next first draft, that new shiny idea will have somehow morphed into an irritable mess of confused timelines and characters that refuse to evolve. 

So for the time being I'm going to enjoy that beautiful alluring new idea - from a distance. I'll jot down a few sentences so that I don't have an excuse to daydream about it (too often) and get back to the noble work of perfecting the novel I've already written. And when it's done, that new shiny idea will still be there, available and waiting. Writing is so exciting.

Write on,
Writes Josh