What's the problem? Identify the problem - and then you'll know if you should restart or just edit. Also, from experience, and I say experience because my word, that damned WIP I'm still bloody writing that I started at 19 years old (I'm 31 now!)... All right, from experience, I've found restarting the draft does not work if you don't know what your problem is. Because the problem will manifest itself in your next draft I know, Sucks. But that's basically what happens. And you'll just get stuck again. That said, I know my characters so well that I find writing my WIP in general very easy. All those scrapped drafts (and I have plenty) have helped me flesh out my characters, finally finally realise when something just isn't working because I've tried to shoehorn the idea in too many times, and it's helped my writing quality in general. I'm a better writer for it, and the drafts are better. In terms of improving as a writer, it's not a waste of time. Also, sometimes you're just tired of it. Maybe the problem isn't the novel per se - like, there's a problem with it, but the main one is actually just you being tired. Step back, do something else you find refreshing and recreational, and then come back and see if it still feels the same. Again, this will help you identify the problem. Another possibility - you've improved I think it gets to a point when you've written so much, your skill level has improved by the end of the draft and now you can see all the crap in the beginning of it lol. And you're like WTF how did I ever write that and think it's good!? Well, it might be just that you're a better writer now than when you started, and you've become more critical. That's no reason to be discouraged and to throw everything away. So, the problems can be many. My advice? Step back, do something else, then come back and make a decision. Your draft is always there. You can come back to it in 10 years time if you wish. It's not going anywhere. Take your time.
You just proved my case that you should never go back and edit your work critically before you finish. When the words flow, you are enjoying the surge of creativity that drives you own, it is optimistic and positive, all things necessary to keep you moving. Editing is critical by its nature. "What they hell was I thinking when I wrote this crap? It makes no sense." That is the editorial mindset, and you have inadvertently put on your editor hat too soon. It is guaranteed to kill creativity, and ensure that you never finish. Save it for the end when creativity is exhausted. I have repeated this many times, but when I write a paragraph, I immediately edit for small stuff, SPaG, tag lines, flow and rhythm. When I finish a chapter, I redo the same thing, give to @K McIntyre for her mark-up, make changes. And that is that! No more editing till job done. I have done some small changes, when I realized some of my character's timelines were way out of line with the other events, that they would be "in the vortex" way too soon. For now (and maybe for the final edition) each chapter has a location and a date, as all my characters are in different places, doing different things, but coming together. Reference for me, for sure. I simply jumped them up a year, or in one case by six months, and changed references in text from spring to fall. But no major revisions! I am having doubts about my WIP, a sequel to Eagle and the Dragon. I feel I have too many characters, too many subplots, not sure where this is going. Can I bring all this stuff together? A challenge, because E&D was 240K words and this will be about the same, probably 3 or 4 times longer than what most here write. But I had the same fears about E&D and in fact set it aside for 13 years because of them. Just press on, write the story, and comb the tangles out when you are finished. Editing now is the kiss of death.
Very much the opposite of how I work. So - I'm pleased that this works for you, but there's certainly no "guarantee" or "kiss of death" to a different approach. We all need to experiment and figure out what works for us, I think.
You're not correctly understanding my situation. I'm not trying to figure out if going back and editing is a problem. It's not a problem for me, and that's not the problem I am dealing with here. There is no creativity that's been killed. I'm not quitting my story. In fact, scrapping what I have might be what saves it. I know I'm not your favorite person around here so it sort of feels like you're posting this just to say, 'ha, you got it wrong.' And maybe I am wrong about my book and about your intentions. But you clearly believe there is a right way and that my problem stems from not doing things that right way, according to you. Perhaps, your comment will help someone else, but I don't believe it was ever intended to help me.
I'm not going to go back and delete my comment above, but I do immediately feel after posting it that I should have just kept my mouth shut. @Lew -- I'm really not trying to start or continue anything. You said something that was a bit of a dig at me a few weeks back when I felt ganged up on. You kind of remember that stuff when it hurts. I can't imagine why you would ever want to help me with anything. It is what it is. I'll do my best to just stay out of your way. And I don't want to argue with you at all on this thread.
@deadrats You've published shorts before. What do you think is more important? Getting it perfect or getting it out? The more time you spend perfecting things, obviously the less work you have to submit at any given moment. I feel like there's a trade off here.
@deadrats, I have no animosity toward you and I actually enjoy your posts. I was not trying to say "do it my way", I was trying to be encouraging to you as you seemed to be in a slump. Good luck with your work, and please don't try to avoid me... I kinda like you
Most writers I know who've had a lot of shorts published began with the Stephen King approach (I believe he got it from another writer, but forget who): write, submit, repeat. If I remember correctly, King's idea was that if he wrote a story every week for a year, even he, as a complete unpublished unknown, couldn't write fifty unpublishable stories in a row. I'd add that the closest I ever got to pro-level short story publication was the short I wrote over the weekend before the submission deadline; AFAIR I started Saturday morning and submitted the 7,500 word story about two minutes before midnight on Sunday. The ones I fiddled with for years never got anywhere.
I'm right there with you, man. I cruised through the first half of my story. Writing a ton every day. Then I slowed down. The raging river became a stream. Now it's a trickle. I'm on chapter 25, and, while I know the bare bones of how I want to wrap up this final quarter of my story, its getting so hard to actually sit down and write it. I find myself distracted when I do sit down to write. I write a little then stop. Its frustrating, because I want to finish my novel. I'm just finding it hard to actually do it. Sorry I don't have any advice. Just wanted to say you're not alone.
I can understand what you are feeling right now. I do understand the "fatigue" element and doubting the quality of what has been written up to that point. I'm the type of person who doesn't believe in sticking with the first draft through to the end before even thinking of making edits. Instead, when I've gotten enough progress through the first draft, I go back on weekends and start typing up previous chapters, starting from the beginning. Then my brain goes into editing mode and I work on improving/fixing/altering the story one chapter at a time, but make sure I don't type so many chapters that I catch up to where I am in the first draft. I want the previous chapters to sit just long enough for me to look at it with fresh eyes when I get to typing them. In this way, I get to tidy up the rough bits in short spurts. I've even added completely new scenes/details that ended up affecting what I wrote in later, first draft chapters. So it's been helpful for me. Perhaps doing something like that might help you clean up the issues you have with the first 100 pages? Look at the story in chunks and focus on improving the prose as opposed to flat-out starting over? And if that technique doesn't help you, then I really don't see why you can't start over. It's your story, your choice. Just make sure that whatever you decide to do can be justified. Some people might find restarting to be a valuable decision; others find it to be a waste of time. This is just my suggestion based on what's been working for me lately.
Just slog through it, I know it might seem impossible, but it most cerntenly isn't. If I can finish 54k words, I’m sure you can two. If your getting overwhelmed try breaking it down into chapter sized chunks. That works for me, I try to do 1k words a day no matter what, even if it feels like I’m wringing out a dry towel. At least I get the ideas down on paper. Reading stand alone novels might help you to get a sense of story structure and plot. Series aren’t as good for learning since the plot arch’s span multiple books. You don’t have to outline, just brainstorm before you begin writing for 20-30mins. That way you will have a better sense of where to take the story and the parts that go in it. By all means follow those rabbit holes though. Save any unused ideas for later. If you feel like the world is going to implode, take a break or work on something different, just don’t delete anything without saving, you might thank yourself some time down the road.
I just put those darlings in a dead file where I can still go back to them if I need to. I have at least a couple hundred thousand words that are in the dead file. Doesn't bother me that I wrote three times as much as I'm ending up using. I wrote the chapters that flowed out easily. Some I've kept, some I haven't. Then I wrote the scenes that were hard to write. For example, sex trafficking scenes are harder to write than slave labor scenes. I never worried about writing out of order. There were a couple months I didn't write a lot. I'm sure that's a common experience. I'm on the last couple scenes now and back to working a lot on the book. My motivation to finish is helping move me along. Been working on it 5+ years now but that doesn't worry me. I've been learning how to write as I go. Everyone's different of course but if you like the story but not the chapters, don't fret over it, set 'em aside, keep going.
I thought it was Ray Bradbury who said that. Maybe King said it to, but I'm pretty sure it didn't originally come from him. And I have proven that theory wrong. I did write a story a week for a year and nothing was published. In fact it took me a few more years really focused on writing short stories until I did sell something. I have sold to pro-level sales. It's pretty cool to see your work in something that Barnes and Noble and other bookstore carry. But those stories were far from first draft. In fact they were rewritten and reworked several times. My first big publication was for a story where I did scratch the whole thing and rewrote it. My next sale was a story I rewrote the first half and took things in a slightly different situation. I can't say I like the idea of restarting, but it really has worked for me in the past. I'm working on a new short story to give myself a little more time away from the novel. Then I will decide what to do.
This sure ain't easy. Wishing you luck to figure it out and finish your book. I do feel like this is harder than it should be for me which makes me question everything. It's tough. I want this, but I also want it to be good and to be published. I have such a long way to go whether I restart this novel or not.
Thanks. I was sort of taking it in chunks. I have very long chapters. When I left of midway of chapter three I had to go back and read it so I could figure out how to continue. I did some heavy editing and rewriting of chapter three, but I thought it came out pretty good. Then I went back to chapter one because I wanted to read through everything to sort of plan my next move. Well, planning my next move seems kind of stupid if I've made all the wrong moves before it. Sometimes I just wish I was better at this than I really am.
It's great that you finished your novel, but did you publish it? I wrote a novel before that was never published. It just wasn't very good no matter how badly I wanted it to be. I read all the time, and it's not that I'm stuck on ideas. It's not writers block. It's just what I have isn't very good, and sometimes you can't fix what you have so that it's good enough to publish. I don't want another unpublished novel at the end of this. I am taking a short break to write a zombie short story, They've become a sort of much-needed escape. My zombie short stories probably aren't very good either. But is a zombie story ever really good? I mean we are dealing with zombies. Oh, I have such a weakness for the undead.
I don't keep drafts, write down ideas for later or hold onto scrapped material. It would bother me to have all that and not know what to do with it. I'm really only interested in the finished product. I know there are several steps to get there, but I'm okay with erasing all my footprints as I make this journey. I don't like to work with an outline or write out of order. Both those things would drive me crazy. Every writers different. As you say, you're learning to write through your process and your five years with your story. I'm looking to bang something out and get a payday. To each his own, right?
Evergreen part 1 is done but not edited, I’m working on part two right now, then I’m going to go back and do the major edits and rewrites for part 1. Once I’m happy with part 1 I’ll edit part 2. The two parts combined should be about 95k words. It’s more fun when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I plan to do traditional publishing once I get feedback from beta readers.
Yeah, like I said, I believe he got the idea from someone else. I think you're right that it was Bradbury.
That was a good read. Lots of helpful info. Wonderful to hang out with folks who want to share their wisdom obtained from their writing addventures. Also reassuring when I read of similar problems I've experienced. Informs me that the hardships I went through are a common and natural part of the development process.
Nope. Never that with writing. Never that with creativity. I have had blocks. Blocks did not slow me. They blocked me. And that is the important stuff. If I understood you correct, you have been working with your writing a lot. But have you been working for it? The point? You told it. "...because it made me happy, it enriched my life and enlarged my outlook. I´ve learnt a lot of things. I had the feeling that I have something to say." I made my working for writing easy, interesting and enjoyable. And I do it a lot. It takes more time than writing itself. And it makes writing easier & faster. Maybe something like that would help?
This smells a bit like a problem. You want your stories to be good. You wan't your stories to be a bit intellectual. Öööööööö....... Witch one you want to write? Good OR intellectual stories? Stories that are meant to be intellectual are almost never good. Stories that are good are almost never intellectual. And intellectual is almost never intelligent. (Science papers excluded. But they are almost never good stories.) If you want to use your intelligence in writing process, write down to the ground, so that everybody understands complex things. If you want to be intellectually lazy and if you want to write stupid stuff, then you should write a bit intellectual text. Pseudointelligentsia will love it - if you copy their attitudes. They don't buy it. They don't use their own money, but they will tell in internet that others should buy and read it.
There are plenty of novels that are good stories and intellectual. In fact there is no shortage of these kinds of stories. Again, this goes back to the highbrow-lowbrow literature debate, but the stuff is out there. Was this the thread where Balzac was being talked about? He's highbrow and produced stories that are both good and intellectual. Intellectual doesn't mean boring. It just means you're writing for an audience and you are familiar with what they like. It's no different than a genre writer knowing what readers are after. Personally, I like highbrow and what could be seen as intellectual stories. It doesn't mean I'm super smart or a snob. It's just what I like to read. It entertains me and sucks me in more than other stories for the most part. But this isn't an area where the reader or writer has to compromise. Good and smart stories are out there, and you really don't have to look hard to find them.
