Two endings

[Lirineth]

Like so many befoe me, and like so many after me, guess what? Yesss, you got it! I write. In my defense I can say that I only do it for myself and my unsuspected husband who now and then becomes my reader/critic/fan/supporter, but he's OK with this because he very seldom has to perform this duties.

So, here I am writing this 'thingy' when I suddenly realised that I don't quite like the original idea any more, and before I had time to go back and kind of polish or rethink it, a new idea came along. Problem being is that idea 2 is not as properly defined as idea 1.

By the way, I alredy thought about merging both ideas but cannot be done, pity no?

So my question to you that not only write but have been doing it on a professional basis, is what do I do?

I really want to finish this one as I have come to care about it a lot.

HELP-HELP-HELP!!!

[the_faery_queen]

a friend of mine thinks you should always finish everything you start just so you have experience at finishing things as well as starting.

for me i wonder, can you not work on them both at the same time? or start the new project and see where it takes you thenm go back to the first? if you've lost motivation with it, i believe it does show in the writing. it will seem dull, will lack the depth that you probably would put in if you were more into it, because you're rushing to get it out of the way.

and i tend to write far better when i have no idea what im doing when i don't know where the story is going, and just let it take shape itself. i guess it depends on whether you work better with a detailed idea

personally, go for the new idea. try it. if it doesn't work out, and you can't develop it, you can ditch it and go back to the original. if it does, then you can work on that and when that's out your system you may feel more inmspired to do the first project again

[Lith]

I don't know that I have an answer for you, but I have been there. Several times. My stories have a tendency to "shake down"- where I get a new, better idea that radically transforms the original, sometimes (usually) to good effect, but sometimes to irreconcilable difference.

a friend of mine thinks you should always finish everything you start just so you have experience at finishing things as well as starting.

This is a good point. To date the only story I've finished (beginning-to-end) is one where I forced myself not to retrofit new information into what I'd already written.

[Giovanna Clairval]

I have finished thingies that headed nowhere, and they finished up heading nowhere.
I did finish them because I had no choice in the matter. I just had to, to see how they were doomed not to work out, but they never surprised me by finishing in unexpected ways.
But of course I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't finished.
So I finished them.
I still would. It is a writing filled with inevitability. It's an exercice in sobriety. Mum always told me I should finish what I started.
It's like making steel. Down you go into the ice-cold water. And once more. Dive. It's for your own good.

I'll never finish one of those old thingies again.

I think.

[JonCG]

If you had been doing it professionally you'd be doing it to a deadline and probably a synopsis and would need to finish the book you were working on because that was the one the publisher had bought.

For what it's worth, and this is only personal experience, but new ideas always look fresher and more enticing that the one on which you've been working for a year and for which you've written 80,000 words!

[Culhwch]

I'm a little confused by your post title and post content, and the responses... Do you mean that you have one project for which you originally had planned one ending, but were suddenly struck with another possible - albeit less solid - ending (ie 'two endings')? Or do you have one project that you've lost enthusiasm for now that another completely unrelated idea for a second project has popped up? I assumed the former, but everyone else seems to have answered the latter.

If it is the first, then I'd say explore the new idea, and see what comes of it. If it doesn't work out, you can always go back to the first ending, or a third ending may present itself to you.

Remember, in writing there is no one right way. Explore, create, discover.

EDIT: I've also moved this out of Writing Resources and into Aspiring Writers, as it's not really a resource, only a discussion...

[Teresa Edgerton]

I always work on one project at a time -- not because of contracts and deadlines, although I do have them -- but because that's just how my mind seems to work.

However, I know many fine writers who can work on several projects at a time, going back and forth between them, and eventually (I don't know how good some of them are at meeting deadlines, but eventually) everything gets written.

I also know people who are so scattered that they never finish anything, leaping from one project to another.

It hardly seems possible that anyone but you could know which category you are likely to fall into. But since you're writing for your own pleasure, you have the freedom to find that out in your own way and in your own time.