Too many meanings, my head is going to burst

So this is why I never finish things except NaNo novels: the shiny wears off an idea/piece of writing and then something new and pretty comes along. Bye bye consistency, hello attention span of a goldfish.

So I try to knuckle myself down to one thing and one thing only, but then there are the beautiful phantom calls of the things I'm ignoring, telling me this could be my one and only chance to get that idea when it's still fresh and cool. Sometimes they get better by leaving, like wine. Sometimes they get worse, and over time the deep red skin wrinkles and the taste gets overripe, and that weird black stuff starts oozing out (OK, this metaphor is going too far) but eventually, even if it doesn't go completely rotten while you've been waiting, it'll still turn out to be one of those fruits that doesn't actually taste of anything and is like eating flavoured foam. So leaving an idea is a good thing if it turns into a better idea, and it's also a good thing if it turns out to be a stupid idea, however disappointing that might be, but there is also the risk of just plain old losing enthusiasm for it. You just end up with this quite awesome idea that you can't be bothered to do anything with, because you thought it up ages ago and the sparkle's worn off.

But then my writing has also suffered for keeping doggedly on with something for which I have lost enthusiasm. I pushed myself onwards with 'Cyberknights' and 'Captain Colney and the Avaricious Angel' in the post-NaNo belief that eventually through pure infinite monkey syndrome I'd end up with something good. In both cases, though, they changed in the writing because I was forced to move forward without stopping to garner ideas or decide how the characters needed to develop. 'Cyberknights' had a definite feel of the YA 'esoteric archetype academy' style (e.g. the 'Vampire Academy' series), which is by no means a bad style, but didn't fit with the level of horror violence I was going for and the more adult themes and subject matter I wanted to wrestle with. It'll still probably turn out as YA, but that's because of the main character, who is only like 16. Some good things came out of the first draft, but it was like a story about a police academy with swords as well as guns, and had completely the wrong feel. 'Captain Colney' has gone through so many incarnations, but it didn't have a plot in any of them. Now I've stepped back and started fleshing out backstory, I've realised that I was missing the point the whole time. So, revelations:

1. 'Cyberknights' is about knights, dammit, and therefore the plot should come first and be full of much derring-do. The moral quandries are completely tied in with the situations the characters find themselves in, so as long as they're challenging, the character development will follow.

2. The thing I love most about 'Captain Colney' is the character of Captain James Colney, so why was I focusing on pretty much everyone except him? His backstory from his youth is much more interesting than anything happening when he's 40. I think it was because I didn't trust myself to be able to write a character I had so much affection for, but following him earlier on should help with that. I'm still a girl, and therefore will probably never write satisfactory non-Gary Stu men, but at least he's in my age group.

Of course, none of this helps if I keep on writing the random little things I'm working on at the moment. One of them is a Solomon Kane-style hero battling demons in a post-apocalyptic setting (yes, I'm obsessed, so sue me) and is enormous fun to write with no pretensions to quality. The other is a strange little tale about modern day fairies, basically a 'Dark Romance' but not about vampires. Also with a very British feel, as fairies are very European to me. Not an original idea, as there are quite a few 'fairy' romances out there right now, but it at least allows more interpretation than the standard vampire setup. Are fairies a bit wussy? Not really - if you think about it, Glamour is a kind of magical date rape drug. It brings in all kinds of issues of consensuality. Fairies have historically been pretty nasty (as emphasised by the Discworld fairies and the recent roleplaying game Changeling) and also are somewhere between impossibly beautiful and sex on legs. So, different morality providing danger to the relationship, plus people who are canonically way more likely to embody ideals of attractiveness? Sounds like a romance to me.