Writing Wednesdays: on deciding what project path to follow

Last week I mentioned jumping into a new  writing project while waiting for the next round of edits to come in. Yesterday, that email came in and with it, a panic attack. What direction do I go now?

Story 1 which I've been working on for several years, have a strong emotional connection with (it's loosely based on a family friend), and spent the past month thinking about little else while I was rewriting. 

Or Story 2 which is fun and different from anything else I've written and fits with the current market. It still lives in my brain where it's shiny and perfect and not tainted yet by my fumbling attempts at setting it to paper.

It shouldn't be a difficult decision. And yet ... I've spent the better part of the last two days paralyzed over what to do. 

Why? Because one is a shorter path to the desired result of having a manuscript to submit while the other allows more time to meander and avoid that next step in the journey. What if story 2 is more marketable than story 1? What if, after all that additional work, story 1 still isn't quite good enough? What if ... 

But at some point, a decision has to be made. Sure, you can abort mission, turn around and take an entirely different path. That new path will, inevitably, lead you to yet another fork.

Self-doubt is a heavy stone to carry on that journey. Failure, however, is a boulder that will crush you. For me, failure is leaving behind a trail of unfinished projects. For another writer, it could be something else entirely.

There are no guarantees what the view will be at the end of any of those paths. Publishing is certainly not the easiest road any of us could have chosen to take. But, as a friend reminded me, "you need to honor the investment." For me, that means following Story 1 to the end of its path and, even if the view at the end isn't what I'd hoped, at least I didn't leave an unfinished heap along the way.