Mark Gellis 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🇺🇦 🌈Now that I've shifted to short stories for a while, one of my new "rules" is that if I cannot get a clear idea of where a story is going in a week, I move to another story. While I am a strong believer in "finish what you start," I think you also have to know if an idea is not working. If I need more than a week to finish a short story, that's fine, but if I don't even know where it's going after a week, then it is best to try something else.
Guy Riessen@Mgellis if a story loses steam like that for me I too simply shelve it—it hasn’t fully ripened. I don’t take notes or write ideas down for later because if the idea is good, it will come back of it’s own volition and demand to be written.
@GuyRiessen And any research I've done is at least not lost because I write my science fiction in the same general universe...bits and pieces from stories that were never finished will end up in other stories.