Hard times coping with influences...

Now lemme elaborate on that title.

I'm writing a story. It has a good setting, the AU is pretty detailed I'd like to think, I have an outline ready for the first chapters, the rest of the story is pretty clear in my head, and yet... I sometimes want to change it. Drastically. Because of other fics.

For example: my story's main ship was to be Sunlight. But then I've read a Twisalis fic, and now I'm not so sure. Re-watching Amending Fences didn't help either. Neither did a Twixie fic.
Then there was a story where Twi was a badass on her own, and now I'm not even sure if Sunset should be present in my story at all. But the story revolves around Twi and Sunny, so it'd need some heavy alterations...
Another example: Twilight was originally intended to be the pre-season-one Twilight, just dragged into something she never thought she would be, something she never wanted. But then a new chapter of The Moon's Apprentice came out, and, yeah...

And then it got even worse, because I stumbled upon Unity is Alchemy AU...

How am I ever going to write anything, if I constantly want to make some alterations? If every story I read I want reflected in mine? Does anyone have similar problems, or am I the only one? How are you coping with this?

Comments

[fallen starr]

Yeah, that does tend to be a problem, at least for me. And comments people make on my stories. That's why I've stopped posting as I go so much. The wylay I deal with it is to, first, step back and look at my original plan. Do I like it? Is it something I was really excited about? Am I now? If not, why did that change? And then I make or don't make adjustments based on that.

So I know you're reading finding Sweetie, so I'll use that. The first draft I had up of that was a train wreck of lost plot points and a mess of a story. At first Sweetie was going to just be Silvers friend, I had no intentions of shipping them, then I read a silverbelle fic and was like I WANT THAT. So it changed completely. Like, derailed it. I ended up with a story that, while I liked it, I wasn't happy with it, so I took it down and made some big changes, and now I'm putting this new one back up, even though my heart isn't in it so much anymore.

So I just want to say, be careful of outside influence. It can be a good thing, because shipping Sweetie and Silver was wonderful, but it can also mess you up.