What the Heck Am I Doing?

Have you ever had one of those "Well, duh!" type epiphanies? The ones that come out of nowhere (usually in the wee hours of the morning when you have to be at work at 7am, of course), blindsiding you with how obvious this revelation should have been to you even though it has been hiding for months?

I had one of those last night. Complete with interrupted sleep (Which might explain the rambliness of at least this post. The others? I'll get back to you with an excuse later). I've been working on my YA Dystopian WIP for a couple of months now, letting Heirs of War sit on the backburner until I get done. I hate interrupting one story to work on another. It messes up my flow.

So I decided when I started the WIP that I would write it to finish with the first draft. After all, it's a YA book so it's not like it will be the 200k that HoW 2 is trying to be. Shouldn't take much time for someone used to 5-10k days like me. Right?

Wrong. Apparently there's this little thing called life that gets in the way. So months later, I am only 10k in. Not a big deal. I'll just push through. I had said that I would give HoW another edit this summer, but I can push it off. No problem.

Wrong again. Here's the epiphany I had: HoW is much closer to being publication-ready than my WIP. I am most likely going to end up self-publishing HoW, so basically it is waiting on me. I just received some AMAZING notes from a critique partner (ahemRachelahem), so I now have some solutions to problems I've been puzzling over for almost a year. So why wait? Why hold back in the hopes of finishing one story's rough draft when I might be close to the final draft of another?

So I've decided to shelve the WIP and finish HoW, getting it ready once and for all for publication. I shouldn't be so proud of this revelation since it really is the most obvious choice, but I am. I feel good about it. And one thing I have learned in this business so far is to hold on to that feeling.