A Question For Writers

I decided to seriously pursue a writing career recently. Like a year ago, maybe less. It’s safe to say that I have no idea what the heck I’m doing or what the heck I got myself into. But we’ll see how this all turns out. Anyway, the reason why I’m sharing this information is because I wanted to talk a little bit about my writing process.

When I was in elementary school I wrote poems and essays. It wasn’t until middle school that I began to write stories. I don’t know what exactly prompted me to do so, except that one day I was at the library and a “voice” in my head began to whisper. Next thing I knew, I had been on the computer for about an hour and had a few pages typed up (albeit the font was big, but whatever, it was still an accomplishment). Till We Meet Again was half Sailor Moon fan fiction and half original story, I worked on it for about 2 years on and off. I never finished it though. That became my routine. I would get excited about a new idea and start working on it, write pages and pages of stuff, and then doubt would creep in. Who’s gonna want to read my story? I can’t write. Hell, English isn’t even my first language, how can I possibly think that I can succeed? With tears in my eyes and a defeatist attitude, I would tear up and delete my work, never to be seen. Time and time again, story after story, they all suffered the same fate.

I eventually began writing and finishing short stories, but the doubt would once again creep in and I would dispose of my stories. To this day, I have kept only one of the stories that I’ve written. Everything else is long gone. I know this is HORRIBLE, you don’t need to tell me, but I’m sure someone will anyways, and I’ll have to agree with you. Now, for the first time ever, I’m working on a story that’s longer than 10k and I’m apprehensive. I’m somewhere around 27k at the moment which is the most I’ve ever written on a story. Last night though, I may have encountered a problem. I was trying to figure out where my characters were supposed to go when a new set of characters began to whisper in my head. At first I thought they were connected to the story I’m working on, so I let them in. Boy was I wrong! Now they refuse to shut the hell up. I couldn’t concentrate on my WIP, so I had no choice but to give the voices a place to rest. Now I’m working on this story because the voices aren’t shutting up, and now I’m afraid that if I start working on this I’ll never finish the other one.

I’ve heard of writers who work on multiple stories with no problem. Others only work on one because they say that if they start a new one they’ll never got back and finish the first. I’m afraid that’s going to happen to me. All those hours of hard work and my story will just lay there, unfinished. I already had to walk away from it for a while because I felt that old doubt creeping back in and I was afraid that I was going to delete it. I really do want to finish it. But I can’t work on anything when I have these other people in my head, giving me a headache.

So what the heck should I do? Has anyone been in this predicament before? I need suggestions, or stories, or…I don’t know…something.