I've been mulling over what writing project to work on for a while now. I've been in the process of rereading my 3 partial novels and weighing things like which I have written more for vs. which I would need to rewrite more for. Sadly, it looks like the answer to previous comparison is the same piece.
My 90+ page novel that I have been working on for about 6 1/2 years now (Bright Fire) is also the one that has the clunkiest writing, the most tangled narrative, the worst logic issues, and the longest passages of "telling not showing."* I'm not done rereading this one, but I can already tell that it's going to take the most rewriting by far, and given that I have a 81 page partial novel (The Wolf and the Sheath) that's also going to need a good amount of rewriting, that's saying a lot.
I think part of why I'm still clinging to BF, is that several years ago I took about 10-15 pages of it to a workshop. The response was overwhelmingly positive - glowing, even. I think I got my head so wrapped around the fact that people thought those 15 pages were really good that I lost sight of a major factor: 15 pages of good material doesn't make up for another 75 of knotted mess.
I started going to a writing critique group last weekend. I brought a short story I wrote about a year ago that is, with the exception of a couple minor tweaks, publishing-ready. And, again, the response was overwhelming. Between that and the fact that I am now also trying to plan a wedding and have to allow time in the week for that on top of my "real" job and writing, I kind of started to look at this a different way.
Writing time is going to be a precious commodity from here on out, at least for the next several months. Do I really want to spend all my writing time trying to fix something that is, in all likelihood, going to frustrate me a lot, for the sake of 15 stellar pages? Or do I want to work on a piece that I haven't felt as daunted by, that is almost as long, that probably also has at least 15 good strong pages in it, and, even though it needs rewriting as well, doesn't have the depth of problems that Bright Fire has?
I have to remind myself that just because a peice I shared with a group is good, doesn't mean that another peice I haven't had feedback on yet isn't. It may be time to accept that in order to actually make progress on something, I have to back away from the peice I've been so focused on for so long. I'm not saying I won't work on BF one day, and I'm not saying I've definitely decided to workshop W & S instead. I still want to finish rereading BF - maybe something just past where I am now will spark my imagination and inspire me to work on it anyway. I also want to reread Brinyor (my third and shortest novel), even though it's only been a year since I was last working on that one. I want to make sure I give all three the same amount of attention and contemplating before making the decision to work on what I hope to make my main project for the next several months.
So now I just have to ask myself the hard questions: even though I'm more emotionally invested in Bright Fire, is it the best thing for me to be doing right now? Am I going to dread coming home and sitting down to the keyboard? Am I going to drag my feet and find ways to stall the actual rewriting process? I'm going to think about these long and hard after I finish rereading and then we'll see.
*In writing, you are supposed to "show, don't tell." You show the action. You show the characters' emotions by describing what their faces look like or what about their stance or fidgeting gives their emotions away. This isn't Shakespeare where the king gets killed offstage and someone comes in and tells the audience about it. (That's not mean to be a knock to Shakespeare.)