Guest Blog: Giving Up on a Novel - Yes or No?

 Today's guest post comes from Janice Hardy's "Fiction University."

How to Tell if You Should You Give Up On Your Novel and Write Something New

By Janice Hardy

Not all novels need to be written. Is yours one of them?

Right after my third novel was published (2011), I hit a bad patch of writing. My muse went on 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 was based on an idea I loved, but they needed a lot of revising and overhauling to make them work, and I wasn’t sure if revising them yet again was 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 that went nowhere. 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. It was outside my regular genre and market, and trying to sell that one felt like I was starting over again as a writer.

I wanted to make those novels work. The stubborn side of me needed to make them work—it became a grudge match. But going back to them risked me falling back into that same bad patch of frustration that made me hate writing.

Is it wise to keep struggling with a novel that might never work, or is it better to work on something new?

This is a tough call for any writer. We put so much effort into a manuscript, and it’s hard to let that go. All that work. All that creative energy. Just gone. It’s easy to understand why we hold on tight and refuse to let go, even if deep down, we know we should. The manuscript is drowning, and it’s dragging us under with it.

If you're facing a similar choice, here are some things to consider:

1. How much work does the manuscript really need?

Sometimes the only way to make a novel work is to trash everything but the idea and start fresh. Which means, if it usually takes you two years to write a novel, it'll likely take you that long to to do a full re-write. Don't con yourself about this (it's SO easy to do)...if all the manuscript needed was a few months of tweaks, you probably would have done that already.

Take some time and look at what needs to happen to make the novel work. Really understand what you're getting yourself into by staying with it. Do you really want to put that much more work into this idea? There's no wrong answer here, This is about you.

For example, for my books, Idea #1 needed a different protagonist, a deleted POV character, and a plot revamp. Half the book would have to be rewritten, and the other half revised to make the new parts work. Idea #2 needed a total rewrite from the plot up. The plot direction was what didn't work. Idea #3 just needed the normal amount of revising. 

(Here’s more on 3 Ways to Tell if a Manuscript Is Worth Going Back to) 

2. What are the odds that working on this manuscript will trigger the same frustrations as before?

Be honest. If you're breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking about it, that's a pretty good indication you should move on to something new. But if there's a glimmer of excitement at finally getting this project to work, maybe it's worth giving it another shot.

How do you feel about the novel? What emotions does it trigger in you? Is it keeping you from writing?

For me, Idea #1 carried a very real risk of plunging me back into darkness. There was just so much baggage associated with it, and even though I loved the idea, and I thought I could rework it in six months, I'd thought that before. Idea #2 didn't have that same risk. I could start over there and be okay. It wasn't the book that made me dread writing, so it didn't have the same emotional triggers. Idea #3 was fun to write, and probably fun to revise.

Deborah Chats About The Children of Kings

For your reading delight, here are some excerpts from a blog hop about current projects. I was finishing up The Children of Kings at the time

Where did the idea come from for the book?
A couple of things. One is that Marion's original concept for Darkover centered on the clash of cultures, so I wanted to bring the Terran Federation back into the picture, but not in a nice, sedately friendly way, in a OMG terrible crisis about to descend upon us way. I also wanted to run away to live with the chieri, and Kierestelli (Regis and Linnea's daughter, from Hastur Lord) kindly offered to take me.

For this tale set mostly in the Dry Towns, I used as background not only The Shattered Chain but a very early (1961) “proto-Darkover” novel, The Door Through Space. The Door Through Space contained many elements familiar to Darkover readers, from jaco and the Ghost Wind to the names of people and places (Shainsa, Rakhal, Dry-towns). Marion was exploring a world in which Terrans are the visitors, and adventure lurks in the shadows of ancient alien cities. She drew upon and further developed this material in The Shattered Chain (1976).

These books reflected the growth of Marion’s vision, but each of them was also part of the times in which it was written. 1960s science fiction novels were often tightly-plotted, fast-paced, and short by today’s standards. Most, although by no means all, protagonists were male, and female characters were often viewed from that perspective, what today we call “the male gaze.” By the middle of the next decade, publishers were interested in longer, more complex works. Not only that, the women’s movement and the issues it raised influenced genre as well as mainstream fiction, opening the way for strong female characters who defined themselves in their own terms. If Marion had written The Shattered Chain a decade and a half earlier, I doubt it have found the receptive, enthusiastic audience it did. Her timing (as with The Mists of Avalon or The Heritage of Hastur) brilliantly reflected the emerging sensibilities of the times.

Now we live in a different world. This is not to say that the previous struggles have been resolved, but that much has changed in the social consciousness from 1976 to today. In writing The Children of Kings, I considered how Marion’s ideas about the Dry Towns (and any patriarchal desert culture) might have changed over the last three decades. The Shattered Chain, with its examination of the roles of women and the choice (or lack of choices) facing them, focused on only a few aspects of the Dry Towns culture. What if we went deeper, seeing it as complex, with admirable aspects as well as those we find abhorrent? With customs that we cannot truly comprehend but must respect, as well as those that resonate with our own? With men of compassion and women of power?

As the Dry Towns developed in my mind, I turned also to the theme that had characterized the early Darkover novels—the conflict between a space-faring technological race and the marvelously rich and romantic Domains, with their tradition of the Compact and the laran-Gifted Comyn. And now, adding to the mix, the ancient kihar-based Dry Towns.

What genre does your book fall under?
Like much of Darkover, it's technically sf, reads like fantasy. This one's a bit more like the earlier novels in that there are space ships and people from outer space and such. And chieri, native non-humans. Definitely romantic.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When Terran smugglers arm the Dry Towns warlords with blasters, it's up to the grandson of Regis Hastur to save Darkover.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I typically take about a year to a year and half from beginning the outline to handing in the manuscript to my editor. It's hard to say "first draft, second draft..." as the amount of pre-writing and "oops-in-the-middle" varies so much. I also usually leap-frog rough drafting one project and revising another, interspersed with breaks for other deadlines (page proofs, short fiction for invitational anthologies). This one was no exception.

I should add that Matt Stawicki did a fantastic job on the cover. I love this painting!