So, after lots of deliberating, I have finally come to a decision. My first novel has been finished for a year now, and was sent off to two agents, one rejected, one still hasn't replied, 6 months down the line. All this got me thinking, and I've had an epiphany, as it were. It's no secret that your writing gets better as you get older/ have more experiences, and I have learnt so much recently, that it is easy to look back on my novel and see it is weak. I could rewrite it again, but to finally get to the point, I'm not going to. Yet. So here's my question, in a round about way. I have decided to put everything involved with the novel, including the manuscript onto a disk, then delete/destroy all other evidence of it, and post that disk to myself. I will not open it again until my 21st birthday, one and a half years from now, when I will have nearly finished uni, and will undoubtedly be a better writer. Has anyone else had a beloved project, that they desperately wanted to suceed, and realised that they did not have the skill to achieve it yet, and so begrudgingly put it off? P.S. this thread has very little to actually do with my book, it's just context for my question, so this isn't a 'give me sympathy and encourage me' post, I just want to hear your stories.
There are three finished general fiction novels in my filing cabinet, along with their discs. The first was finished when I was seventeen and the second was finished two years ago. They landed there because when I read them, my gut just told me, "This is not the book to break you out of pseudonym-genre books. Do another one." One of those three is one I will return to someday and do the necessary rewriting and polishing to make it something I will be willing to submit. After an objective look at the other two, I concluded they were just something I needed to get out of my system, and they proved that I could finish not just one novel, but two. They were tremendously cathartic and I loved writing them, but I wouldn't be able to emotionally deal with the changes it would take to make them marketable. They're just too personal for that.
