WIP Challenge - Check In Day 11 - Monday

[the_rck]

Poll #16675

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

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Yesterday and today I

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planned
1 (16.7%)

researched
1 (16.7%)

wrote
2 (33.3%)

sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

edited
0 (0.0%)

posted
0 (0.0%)

rested
0 (0.0%)

did something else
3 (50.0%)

The way I feel about that is

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Mean: 4.50 Median: 4.5 Std. Dev 1.26

Terrible 1		0 (0.0%)
2		0 (0.0%)
3		2 (33.3%)
4		1 (16.7%)
5		1 (16.7%)
6		2 (33.3%)
7		0 (0.0%)
8		0 (0.0%)
9		0 (0.0%)
Wonderful 10		0 (0.0%)

Do you have story ideas that you never start writing? What barriers are there to writing those stories? How do you keep track of things you might want to write later but aren't going to write now?

I do tend to have story ideas that I never write. Usually, the difficulty is either that I don't feel I have enough of a grasp of canon and don't have the time or access to review it or that the story requires writing things I don't think I can manage. There's one story I really want to write that's been hung up for over a decade on the need for a detailed and spectacular combat scene that I see no way to handwave away. I'm not even sure it's possible for those characters to fight and end up with the outcome the story requires.

I keep a document on my laptop with a few fragmented notes on each story idea I have that's more than just a general "oh, maybe I should write something about those characters some day." I've actually started several of them and just hit a point where I don't know exactly what comes next. I write linearly, so skipping over parts doesn't work for me in general.

Comments

[terabient]

Today I tried writing in a nonlinear way for the first time--I wrote the last chapter in a fic that I have outlined but haven't really started, per se. I have no idea if anything I wrote today will stay in the finished product, but it was exciting to try something new.

I have notebooks full of story ideas that almost certainly will never see the light of day. Mostly because I'm shy. ^^; It's very hard for me to be confident enough with an idea to even start writing it in the first place, and if I get to that point, I'm rarely able to gather the courage to finish and post it publicly. I'm trying to get better at that, though.

[samuraiter]

Tons of ideas. I've got outlines and prewriting all over the place. But! My biggest barrier is time, followed by a perceived lack of interest. *grumbles* The old rule applies: The more ambitious the idea, the smaller the possible audience.

[dirty_diana]

My barriers are pretty much biology/physics - I can realistically write one story in a year, *maybe* two. So I prioritise the ideas I would be sadder not to finish, and if I forget an idea then I was probably never going to write it anyway. :)

[linaewen]

I am traveling, and this is the first I've gotten online for a few days. Hoping to get some writing done in the next day or two, but my days are full of the unexpected while I travel, so we'll see.

I have a couple of story ideas that I will likely never write -- all in an anime fandom that inspires me with story ideas, but which feels too vast to get a good grip on the canon enough to write it properly. I keep my ideas in folders and from time to time, I research them and double check my ideas against canon to see if they will work. It's possibly that if I get enough info and if my idea gets researched enough, I may feel confident to write the stories anyway. I have a tendency to want to see certain gaps in canon filled, and if no one else write those gapfillers, then I may have to!