Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.
Usually, the problem for me is to ignore the shiny sparkly new story that is begging to be written, but I recognize that not everyone is as impulsive as me (thank goodness!). So when is the right time to give up on a story and move to something new? Janice Hardy from Romance University has some tips to help you decide.
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Should You Give Up On Your Novel and Write Something New? – by Janice Hardy
How many unfinished and abandoned manuscripts do you have? Author and blogger Janice Hardy shares her insight on the dilemma all writers face.
Right after my third novel was published (2011), I hit a bad patch of writing. My muse had gone vacation, every sentence I typed was a battle, and writing became a chore I dreaded. Although it felt like giving up, I shifted my writing focus to nonfiction until telling stories became fun again. Eventually it did, but it took years.
I wrote a lot of so-so novels during that time. Every single one had an idea I loved, but they need a lot of revising and overhauling to make them work, and I’m not sure if revising them yet again is a good idea or not.
Idea #1 frustrated me for two and a half years of revisions. Idea #2 took another two years of my life. Idea #3 was a NaNo project that actually made writing fun again, but then languished when I wasn’t sure what to do with it next.
I want to make these novels work. The stubborn side of me needs to make them work–it’s a grudge match at this point. But going back to them risks me falling back into that same bad patch of frustration.
The end of last year, I picked up Idea #3 again. It was the novel that reminded me why I loved to write, and the one that had the least emotional baggage attached to it. It needed serious gutting and revamping of both the plot and the characters, but the story was sound and the idea excited me.
Last month, I sent it to my critique partners and beta readers, and it’s getting the kind of glowing feedback I haven’t seen since I sent them my debut novel (The Shifter). I’m overjoyed, and it’s given me hope that those other two ideas are indeed salvageable.
However…