: Welcome to the Writing Stack, Alayna. When you write, it's usually more effective to focus on one project at a time You've already noticed that you can't always remember what you were planning

@Kaufman555

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Welcome to the Writing Stack, Alayna.

When you write, it's usually more effective to focus on one project at a time

You've already noticed that you can't always remember what you were planning with previous projects. When you put a story down for awhile, it can begin to fade from your memory. So if you want to write a story, it's better to keep at it until you've at least finished a "draft".

(A draft is a version of a story or other piece of writing. Some writers will rewrite the same story several times before calling it really finished, creating several drafts. Even if you don't do that, you will still probably want to go back and fix spelling and grammar, and rephrase things so they're easier to understand.)

Working on just one project doesn't mean you have to finish every story you start - because sometimes you will get partway in and realize you don't really want to write that story after all.

If you do have to put up a story and not work on it for awhile, it's good to write notes to yourself about what ending you have in mind, or things characters are going to say or do, or what is going to happen next. That way, when you come back to the story later, you'll have a better idea what was happening.

In fact, I myself often write notes about things I want to put into a story, even if I'm working on it every day. I don't feel like I have to use every interesting line or every surprising event I think of - but I at least I remember that I was thinking about it, because it's right there in my notes.

After you've finished a draft, then you can let a project rest

A useful trick is to put a finished draft away for a little while, a week or a month or so, and then come back and read it again. It's okay to work on writing something else in the meantime. When you come back to a piece of writing you haven't worked on for awhile, you will often see mistakes that you couldn't see when you were looking at it every day and knew exactly what you were thinking about. Or you'll notice that you didn't explain things very well, and a reader who doesn't know exactly what you were thinking when you were writing won't understand. Now that you can see some of those problems, you can rewrite the places that need to be fixed, and the story will be better.

But first, focus on one project and write it to the end, and it will help you become a more confident writer.

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