Sometimes ideas don't work out quite as well as you'd hoped and sometimes they need more time to develop, but how can you spot the telltale signs that you need some distance when you're so involved?
It's a situation that most writers are familiar with: you feel as though you've developed enough of your key ingredients to create, so you get started. But half way through the project you get stuck, after a while panic sets in and soon no matter what you do it feels as though you can't solve the riddled mess you created.
Whilst most projects involve a getting stuck to some degree, there are signs that you've reached a temporary impasse that requires a trial separation.
As usual this is by no means an exhaustive list, but it's worth trying out the following:
First things first: Make the changes
Grab a notepad and start making some serious changes to what you have already made. Be fearless, be stupid, be ruthless.
This won't magic away the issues that exist with it, but your problem could be that you're dismissing possibilities without considering the full consequences they have on the story. It may be that what you believe to be a ludicrous conceptual idea enables a much stronger piece, which is all that you audience are there to experience. Who goes to a performance with the objective of being dissatisfied? Not your target demographic I would wager.
This can also test how connected you are with your own message. If you're not sure how these major alterations impact what you're trying to express, you may need to start thinking about the below.
Where did this come from?
Few things can be as exciting as that eureka moment at the start of a brand new idea. Snatching the notepad in a frenzy it's sometimes easy to forget that the final article will look nothing like the first ideas you commit to paper.
But whilst the details will drastically shift it's important to maintain a deep connection with the reason you, as much as anyone else, need this piece to exist.
Is there an emotion that seems underrepresented, is there an uncomfortable truth of which people seem horrifyingly unaware, is it something they said?
Being able to concisely frame what is important about your work will not only make it easier to get more people on board when you're ready to take it to the next level (performance, publishing etc), it will sharpen your focus and put you in a strong position to identify the really difficult, necessary cuts to prioritise.
What do you think?
Nothing helps like a second opinion, but in this case you may not even need to go through the act of getting feedback.
Consider handing your piece, as it is, to an enthusiastic supporter of your work. If they are intrigued about what you write and have enjoyed what you've written before, but the idea of showing them what you're working on now makes your skin crawl, chances are you're not gaining much by continuing to plough ahead with your edits and hoping everything will sort itself out.
Shelving a project does not mean that you have to leave it forever and it can be necessary for a huge variety of reasons. Although putting projects to one side for now can feel like failure and a waste of your time, what you've learned can be massively valuable experience and that's likely to improve your next piece, if you decide to move on for now of course.
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