Writing New Stuff

I took an advanced fiction writing course this past spring at the University. A whole class where I didn't have to do anything but write? It sounded perfect, and for the most part it was. I wrote and edited a 35,000 word novella. A fairy tale I had been thinking about for a long time. It is rough and really needs to be made into a novel to get the complete story out, but it got good reviews from my writer's groups and from my peers in class. Someone even said, "This is the type of writing you were meant to do." Pretty high complement huh? But it wasn't what I wanted to be writing at the time. I struggled everyday writing on that when all I wanted to do was go back to my YA novel that I was 30,000 words into before the class started. I wrote my fairy tale because it was a cool story that I'd thought about. I have the setting down pretty good. When we were in Germany a couple of years ago we found this amazing castle called Hohentwiel. I know the ending because I have imagined it in my head for the past three years. I have a novella written that basically needs to be flushed out. But still the minute class ended and I got my A, I went back to my YA book (Room). It was a little rock at first, as time away had given me some insight on things I wanted to change, so the past month has been spent editing the first 38,000 words. It has been fun. I love my characters! It is no wonder why I couldn't wait to get back to them. But now I am at the end of the road I had set for them and today I need to step off into the unknown and give them knew problems, and insight, and romances. It is a little scary. So scary that I almsot want to go back to my safe well adjusted fairy tale. The problem with that is I know once I go back to the fairy tale those characters will find the same (well not the same, but similar) problems that I will not be sure how to solve, that will keep me up at night debating what comes next. So I am going to finish Room. I am going to step off the path into the darkness and see what will become of my characters lives. Hopefully by the end of summer (or should I say before Fall semester starts) I will have a completed first draft of Room. I'm excited. Writing new stuff can be scary, but I'll have my characters with me every step of the way! Unless of course I decided to kill them off :)