[frahse]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

I'm a newbie to novel writing, and am working on plot for a couple of stories that are meaningful to me. But they deserve a better outcome than what I can give them right now while I learn to write.

I don't want to ruin a good story, so should I put the stories on a shelf until I know what I'm doing?

First drafts are said to be "trash" and that the challenge is to just get the story down in some rough form. Writers also seem to always have many good stories in mind, so maybe it's not important to save that great story idea for later.

What's your advice? Anyone else ever have this worry, or am I uniquely demented?

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Bob, what better way to "learn" to write than on a story you really care about? Your desire to bring out the best in the story should help bring the best out of you.

I say go ahead and write it. It will be good practice regardless, and there's no reason you can't go back and re-edit it later (you should be doing a re-edit pass anyway).

Originally Posted by ekster

I would write whatever I could. If you don't like the result, save it and come back to it in the future.

I see it as:
If you write it down, what's the worst that can happen? You wrote something that you don't like that you're free to edit anytime in the future.
If you don't write it? You'll forget your good story and that's the end of it.

Put it (your best material) and yourself out there when you start writing. Don't be shy.

However don't sent it off until you have a year or two under your belt, and by then you should have a feel of what you can do, and what you want to do.