So what do I do? I plot.
Just before I typed 'the end' on The Scion I started scribbling around and was hit with a lightening bolt with this idea. And I loved it. I loved it so much I kept fiddling with it and helping it grow. I kept jotting down ideas and characters and possible plot arcs and images kept popping up in my head. I thought about tense and point of view and what kind of character I wanted the main character to be and how she was going to evolve and I was so very excited.
Then revisions started to get serious right around finals time. And naturally, having no sense of self preservation, I made the choice to finish revisions instead of studying for that statistics exam that was the bane of my existence. And Veronica posted an amazing song on Twitter. This song. And my world kind of exploded.
It was awesome.
I got chills listening to this song. I saw an entire world rise up in my mind. It had holes, sure. But it was there. And it had a character screaming, telling me, 'Dude, I'm the Pretender.' And I was all, holy God what am I gonna do now? Why are you yelling at me? Why can't you understand that I already have a plan?
So now I'm grappling between the beautiful, quiet story that I've been tending like it's my own, personal rose garden, and the story that kind of just blew my mind and was like 'Hi, I'm everything you ever wanted in a story. Write Me.'
And I think that's okay. I think that sometimes writer's feel loyal to their ideas (or maybe that's just me???) but the ideas don't disappear unless you let them. You can write one story, and go back to that idea. And it'll have had more time to grow and might even be more awesome when you get back to it.
So I still don't know what I'm going to do with this whole guilt thing. I'm fiddling with both ideas and seeing which one ends up more fully formed by my last exam. And I'm banishing the guilt from my mind.
