Best Laid Plans

One of my many frustrations as a writer is my inability to follow through on a number of my plans. Chalk it up to writer's block, performance anxiety, or whatever-you-will. The fact is, 80% of all my ideas never get finished. Some never even get started beyond that one page worth of text. Sure, I save all of my "almost starts" and "halfway theres" in a folder I call "Unfinished Business," but I don't think I ever really managed to get back to any of them. Even The Vampire Nicoletta, the piece in that folder that got the farthest (a good 30% of the story was done) hasn't been dusted off and added to in a long, long time.

Of course, this situation contrasts with the pieces that I have managed to finish.

I suppose I should take a bit of pride in what I've managed to finish, even if I'm not exactly proud of how they turned out when compared to how I wanted them to be. Sure, there are aspects of them that are retained and, somehow, I managed to keep my core idea for the pieces coherent despite the degeneration of the narratives themselves, but...well, I'm not sure exactly. I suppose the changes reflect my moods whenever I wrote, but there's something more to it I can't quite place off the top of my disjointed little head. I guess it has something to do with my rather contradictory writing nature.

You see, when I manage to land a hook on a project I truly enjoy, I keep at it until the end is done. However, even if I'm into the project at the start, my interest might wane after I've started. If the contents of my "Unfinished Business" folder are any indication, then I tend to lose interest more often than stay interested. A sad state of affairs, particularly for a number of pieces that could have been good, solid short stories. Nothing major or grandiose, but able to stand their own ground against casual critics. I find it sad, really. Looking at the contents of that folder (it's about 300MB [roughly] of unfinished fiction, which is a lot when you consider the relative file sizes of MS Word documents) makes me feel like a killer - in the bad way. Every one of them feels like a dream I shot down, with the worst part being that they're my own in many ways.

I'm not worried about my mind suddenly abandoning Darkness & Stars, but work on that darling piece is slow-going. Now more than ever, thanks to work and other ideas running around my head. Literally, I might add.

I literally hear the voices and see the images of the various characters I've created in my head at all times. It's like they've populated my head and turned part of it into an ever-expanding metropolis that they populate. In many ways, attempting to think about how they all fit into the already-jumbled mess that is my mind scares me. The fact that I thoroughly imagine them to be rather hostile to me fills me with even greater alarm. Oddly enough, I don't hear the voices of the characters who appear in my finished works. Their voices die out as soon as I'm finished with their story, but the ones who never get their "time in the spotlight" stick around and torment me whenever I close my eyes.

Yes, I know I sound schizophrenic. Maybe, in some ways, I am. Who really knows?

Which brings me to what brought about this bout of introspection.

I've got another plan in the works. This one...well, I'm not even sure how to put it together exactly. Maybe it will never come together, who knows? All I know is, the main characters, Pamela and Ivy, are causing a real ruckus in my head whenever I sleep. If ever mere fragments and aspects of a person's subconscious could be defined as "persistent" and "unrelenting," those two would fit the bill. It doesn't help that I have no idea how I came up them or which of my thousands of ideas they came from (though I do detect vague hints of the Batman Poison Ivy [the version seen in The New Batman Adventures] in the way my mind designed their appearance).

It amazes me, actually. The level of detail and dedication my subconscious mind can attribute to characters and worlds that are in my head. Then, the moment I try to get them down on paper (or screen, as the case may be), the whole thing just goes downhill.

Ah, but I'm probably just defeating myself with this. I'm sure my latest idea, Pamela & Ivy, won't end up in "Unfinished Business." At least, I hope not. It is a rather plain, nice concept, but one that won't be too long and probably won't have much room for all the insanity and oddness I'm known to stuff into my work.