Hey guys! I just want to share a little dilemma that I'm feeling right now. I finished writing the first draft of my fantasy story and it ended up falling apart near the end and became too complex. But now I urged myself to rewrite the whole thing. It turned into a much better, focused and well-paced story and I am very happy about how it's turning out. However, it feels like a much smaller story than before. I sometimes get extremely bothered that I dropped the previous version of the story and have some difficulty in letting it go, even if the new one is clearly better. So I ask you guys, have you ever experienced this feeling when doing major rewrites? How did you respond? Did it turn out well? I'm just curious..
Sometimes referred to as "killing your darlings," most writers burn a lot of words in revision. Writing is a process. If we get too attached to our words we lose the freedom we need to improve on what we've written. It's not often that my first draft doesn't take a beating from "cut and paste" and the delete key. I used to think how I'd "wasted" time. No more. I see the first draft as a neceassry step and subsequent revisions as refinements.
So, first, you wrote an entire story, presumably novel length. Then, you decided to rewrite it from scratch. Now, you want to dump the rewrite and return to the original. My advice is, pick one and stick with it. Don't get sentimental over what you leave behind.
I second what @DueNorth said. It's easy to see words that you write and delete as a waste of time, but that's forgetting about the fact that the words you don't write are just as important as the ones you do.
I concur with Due North and Mr. Musil. There's nothing sacred about a first draft and inevitably a lot that should be pared away or refined or simply trashed. The draft is getting the rough idea out there. No one that I know or heard of can write a first draft worth publishing. Or second. Or, probably, third. Just because it's in your head doesn't mean you got it on paper -- or I guess in the e-file.
I think I'm lucky to have started writing expecting to do exactly this, based on what I've learned from other authors who've already been through the process. I tell my writing group that I'm "...about 130,000 words into a 75,000 word novel," right now. ETA: Blaise Pascal quote. (translated: "I made this one [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter.")
I suspect what you may need is more distance. Give yourself sufficient distance from the project. Leave it alone for a while, go and do something else, like read a few more books you've always meant to read, or work on another project altogether. Go back to it only when you can read it as if you hadn't written it. This sounds crazy, but it's not. You will clearly see flaws, and you will not want your old version back, if the new one is better. That being said, if there are parts to the old version that you still like, you can save them and perhaps use them in another story. If they just didn't fit into this one, don't throw them away. Use them for something else. I have to say that once I pared my excess away (and I cut from 312,000 words to 206,000 words) I didn't miss the parts I got rid of at all. Two chapters got saved because I can see using them elsewhere. But the rest? Nope. It was wonderful getting rid of the clutter.
When I cut the useless stuff from my YA story, it went from 60K to 35K. I was surprised and disappointed that it became such a small story. After taking a break from it, I found that it was lacking in character development. Rewriting with that in mind, I've been able to add 15K (and counting) to it, which I hope is all meaningful content, though I've been finding it hard not to get attached to word count since I want so desperately to call it a novel.
Based on the advice of the editor of my first novel, I trashed an entire POV that cut about 25% of the book and resulted in some major re-writing of another 25%. Like you, I was able to logically understand that the book was better for it (it was way too long for the genre and the pacing was hella wonky), but for a long time I mourned that loss. Especially when I read reviews that said, "I wish I knew what Zachary's thoughts were" because I actually had them in the first draft. The best thing I did was suck it up and move on to a different story. Woulda-coulda-shoulda can put you in a spiral that makes it hard to move into the next chapter or the next step of your writing. Don't let it distract you from moving on.
This is the exact experience I had with my first project. It was going to be a fantasy series based in D&D's Forgotten Realms and about the 'Time of Troubles'. I started with a rough outline and a few characters. It took roughly 50+ hundred page notebooks to write out the four books. I added characters, developed characters and basically did all the prep work a writer is suppose to do before they begin writing the book while I wrote. I ended up with fully developed characters, cool plots, a promising story line and etc. All buried in 50 odd notebooks of rubbish. So, I started again. The way I looked at it, and still do for that matter, I'm not just writing a book, I'm learning how to become a writer. So, I took what I learned and completed the first draft of the first two books in the series. Now, these were big improvements over the first effort. Not publishable, but, much better. Since then, I've decided to make my 'FR' story an original property and, you guessed it, started over. Over the summer I've been world building and planning out my new series. There's a lot I've learned from these forums, for example, how to do a scene list and now I'm almost ready to begin the first draft of the first book of that new series. As hard as its been, as I see my ideas and writing mature, I do not regret starting over. Godspeed!
I think you have to look at a first draft like the first person you thought you were "in love" with. At the time, you think "This is it!" Then, with some distance and other life experiences, you realize it was just infatuation and that something much better is out there. Infatuation with one's words leads to an inevitable breakup.
