Sunday, May 22, 2011

Picking the Proper Project

I've spent the last couple of days looking through the novels-in-progress that I have saved on my computer. Some are old NaNoWriMo projects that got abandoned after November. Some are novels I started at other times, with random bursts of inspiration. I even found some documents that are only one or two lines about an idea for a novel that never got off the ground.

Basically, the purpose of this exercise is to figure out which has the most potential. I'm going to be completely honest: some of this writing should never see the light of day. If it weren't for my obsessive need to archive, I would probably delete at least three different documents out of shame.

On the other hand, there is some stuff that seems worthwhile. A dystopian sci-fi that was just starting to take shape, a historical fiction that got set aside when the research started taking up too much study time, a YA coming-of-age novel.

But the one that caught my attention and held it was the novel I started during NaNoWriMo last November. I didn't meet the 50,000 word deadline--19 credit hours and two shows made sure of that--but the concept seems pretty solid.

Basically, it's the story of an art heist gone wrong. There's a fairly large cast of characters, but I actually took the time to flesh them out before I started writing, so I think they'll hold up under scrutiny. Furthermore, this is one of the rare occasions where I actually bothered to outline the whole story, beginning to end. That's got to be a good sign.

All of that considered, the decision was easy. The art heist story is going to be my project this summer. It's still without a title, but maybe you guys can help me with that?

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