Decisions, Decisions

I’ve had a hard time recently trying to decide where I should focus my efforts, now that critiques are winding down on my historical romance.

After some deliberation, where I read through every scrap of text I generated for my other novel-length WIPs, I finally decided to go with the mostly completed, extremely flawed SF novel. It’s ok to applause – it was a very tough decision.

It’s the second of two SF novels I have in the works. The first is set in the far far future. I got about a quarter of the way into it before I put on the breaks. I was dealing with so many futuristic concepts and assumptions, I needed to take a step back in time and suss out how things got the way they did. The result was a new story, the second SF story, that I drafted last summer, set in the not-so-distant future.

It was easier to manage in terms of worldbuilding, where I only had to focus on a few changes from present time, instead of a whole milieu. And good practice. But as my post Exorcising Demons from a while back can attest, the project was not without flaws. Once I completed the first draft, I realized the story had too much of a romantic arc and was more political than I originally envisioned. I also needed to add in a third POV character, which I’ve since done.

Now the story is a lot closer to where it needs to be, but there’s still a ways to go. I’ve dreamed up new aspects to my characters, more subplots, and a twist on the true villain of the story, which means basically the last third of the draft needs to be thrown out and rewritten. Yay. Not.

But I like this story. I think about it a lot. It’s essentially a near-future caper, with a wide cast of characters who keep calling out to me. And I’m having way too much fun incorporating future technology and the like into the storyline to stop now.

Even if it never goes beyond my hard drive, I feel like I have to finish this story properly. The potential is there, and I have to hope my writing potential is up to the challenge.

Wish me luck!