That’s what I always ask myself after every completed project. Okay. What now?
I did a leisurely cruise through my old (1 year+) story starts and…I love three of them. Possibly even four. I can’t write three (four) novels at once, though, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last ten years, it’s this: there should always be more irons in the fires and no story is your darling.
(Except when it is your darling, but I suspect you can only ever let it be your darling when you have five bestsellers published and the NYC editors breathlessly waiting for your next submission — but that’s for another time.)
I used to let a novel be my darling, and I would ruthlessly write, and rewrite, that one story until it was a tattered flag waving in the wind. That way, my friends, lies madness.
No story is my darling anymore, but I still love three (four) of them, and the conclusion I’ve come to is I’m going to outline all three (four) and then decide which one to write. And once I finish one, I’ll have an answer to “What now?” Move on to the next one, of course.