Pitch First, Novel Later?

I don't know what you're like 'in-between projects,' but I'm a confused nervous wreck who just wants to read webcomics all day. So now that I've fixed up my story about the comic book character who shoots his author, I'm starting back on a high sci-fi to keep me from going insane while I wait for agents and possible revisions. Because I'll never get any of my day-work or studying done if I don't have a novel to keep me from reading webcomics all day.

I've got an idea, and I'd like to see what you think. This time, I'm not just diving in and writing the frikkin thing, even though it's all outlined and everything. This time, I'm writing the pitch first. I've had novels flop before (back in high school--DON'T TELL ANYONE GASP) because they didn't have coherency, and I found that the pitch for Issue 339 kept me going through those dead moments of, "does this book actually matter?"I knew exactly what my nerdy vengeful inner-Jason-Todd wanted to tell everyone, and I knew what I wanted to sell. If I needed a reminder, I went back to the pitch. While the book did end up going just a bit longer than I wanted, having the pitch early in the process kept me cutting as we went along. 80,000 words is much more reasonable than the, say, the ridiculous 150,000-word fluff I wrote back in high school.

I hope this pitch-to-myself-first thing works for this new story. I'm nervous as heck, because I really don't want to dive into a story and find it's unsaleable. I want to figure that out BEFORE I spend three months of my life churning out my soul. Too bad I can't, yannow, just put my pitch out there for an un-started novel and ask if it sounds like something an agent would pick up.

But that's the whole risky beauty of it, isn't it? In the end, we can't be certain. We hide from our families and friends, type like drunk sloths late into the 5 AM and 6 AM hours and then drag ourselves back into our 'day-jobs' three hours later. (Yes, I type like a drunk sloth at 6 AM--don't you?) We may not know if burning out our health or slowing down our social lives actually pays off. It's like jumping off a cliff, only without the excitement and the, yannow, death. It's like deciding to jump off a cliff day after day until you either learn to fly, or the cliff goes away. It's like being a bird.

Welp, that all sounds very ridiculous to me, but everything sounds ridiculous at 6 AM. What do you think? How do you decide your story's worth writing? Do you write only for yourself, or are you writing for a reader? What keeps you going through sloughs of doubt? And does it help to pitch first? Post in the comments below! Or just answer in your head--that's okay, too.

Here's the new story idea--
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This morning, Lem's little brother crash-landed on a space flight trying to smuggle medicines to needy settlers. This afternoon, Lem's little sister 'misplaced' a super-powered killing machine somewhere in an infinite ocean. This evening, Lem's best friend will help her try out a shock-weapon that will backfire and slowly dissolve Lem into a sentient goop. This is normal stuff: Lem's a teenage intergalactic ninja, and her family fights alongside aliens of all species to stop a megalomaniac from 're-organizing' their galaxy into uniformity.

Now Lem's dying and trapped in her own head. She battles her way through terrifying memories while her best friend searches the galaxy for a cure--but when he finally manages to heal her, she awakens imprisoned in an underground sand-castle, not hidden in the hospital where she fell asleep. She also finds out her entire family's disappeared, and the megalomaniac dictator-wanna-be is mind-controlling Lem's allies with her own secret weapon. Worst of all, Lem's trip inside herself convinced her she's got more in common with the megalomaniac than she wanted to admit; she wants to save her universe, but now she may need to save herself first.