Take Two?
Therese Walsh on Oct 20 2009 | Filed under: CRAFT, Inspirations
First things first: LisaP, my Random Number generator chose you as the winner of a copy of The Last Will of Moira Leahy. Congratulations!
My WOW! Women on Writing blog tour officially began on Monday with an introduction and a Q&A about The Last Will of Moira Leahy. Someone who commented on the interview, Julie, left a question for me that I answered at WOW but would like to post here too.
She wrote:
Therese, I’d be curious to hear how you got yourself motivated to begin again from square one. When you realize that you basically have to scrap an entire book and re-write it, the task can seem so daunting. Where do you even begin? Any advice for getting over that hump?
My response:
It didn’t happen right away; I grieved for the failed manuscript. I was roughly halfway through a completely different manuscript, too, and so I considered letting book #1 be the one that would live forever “under the bed.” But there was just something about that story and its characters that wouldn’t let me rest. Once I knew I had to try, it still wasn’t easy feeling motivated. There were plenty of dark moments of the soul when I doubted if I could or should do it.Something that helped tremendously was finding new excitement for the story by marrying what I already knew about the characters and their tale with new possibilities. I still remember sitting outside as my kids played in the pool, working through Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, and having a major revelation about one of the characters. Could I really do that to her? And I realized, YES, I could, and YES, I should, and how cool would it be if it really worked…?
So when you tackle an old project anew, make it new for yourself too. You may want to try a new voice, mix up the sequencing, add new layers to the story and/or lean more heavily on theme by introducing new subplots. Oh, and definitely check out the Breakout Novel Workbook. I hope that helps!
Unslumping oneself is never easy, but I think stretching your story and your mind is a great way to invigorate a manuscript. Challenge yourself personally. Challenge your story goals. And challenge what you believe to be possible–because anything is.
Write on, all!
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There are some stories I have written that I think I would like to revisit and there are others that I am unsure about. I feel like it is a bit of a step in the wrong direction to return to a story. How do you decide which stories are worth going back to. Do you pick your biggest disasters and try to rebuild them or do you tweek one of your favorites and risk ruining something good?
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As someone with a very crowded ‘under the bed’ lineup, I’ll agree with Therese–the dividing line for whether to leave them in the dark or dredge them up is whether or not the story and characters won’t leave you alone. If they will, leave them in the dark. If, however, your brain keeps working on it (and bringing new things to it) even when it’s under the bed, give it another try.
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Starting over is tough – I recently did it with a novel I was writing. It got to a point where I hated the book, the characters, everything and decided to make a change 35,000 words into it.
I blogged about it here:
http://writersnwriters.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-new-novel-change-gulp.html
.-= Jim Wisneski´s last blog ..Open horror submissions! =-.
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Christelle, Jeanne said it best–if you can leave them under the bed, then do. I couldn’t. I felt sick about abandoning the story and its potential, and I also felt that I could do better if only I’d try. I also felt that my dusty concept was simply better than the new story I’d been drafting. Why leave a diamond in the rough under the bed to continue polishing what would only ever be a pretty stone, you know? So between the gut, that haunted feeling, and the realization that story #1 was just plain better than anything else I had imagined, I started again.
You also said, “tweak” one of your favorites, and honestly, I don’t know how that would work. Tweaking might do wonders for others and their scripts, but for me I knew that the draft had a long way to go in order to live up to its potential and needed a different vibe. I chucked all but one scene and six characters and started again from scratch–new voice, some new characters, new story structure. I rarely looked at the first draft of the story while reworking it, either, and it became alien to me. They are like two different stories.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
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Jim, love this note re: your feelings for your old draft: This story that made me consider wishing I were blind so I would never read again. Thanks for the morning laugh. And good for you for realizing exactly what was wrong–it wasn’t the story, it was just the way you’d chosen to tell it. It looks like you’re barreling through the script now. Congrats, and best of luck with your story. I hope we see it on the shelves one day soon.
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Great comments; thanks. I shied away from the word “rewrite” — but changed everything. Just calling it “editing” kept me on board. I felt strongly about hoping this story will be helpful to others that even changing from third person voice to first person voice was worth the journey. Whenever it seemed insurmountable, I would consider the rewrite equal to work for another college degree (“think of the education you’re getting!”). Lastly, I tried to forge a path through the process that will benefit me in books to come.
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When I read this question in summary on Twitter my gut reaction was to say “GOD, NO!” because I thought you meant my already published book.
But I *did* do this, for Book Two, aka THE LIFE YOU’VE IMAGINED and it was hands-down the hardest writing thing I’ve ever done, and it makes the top ten list of hardest things accomplished in my whole life (below the birth of my kids and quitting my day job).
Your advice is spot-on about making it new for yourself. Also, I was fear-motivated, as in, fear of failure. (That’s how I’m always motivated, come to think of it. That, and chocolate.)
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Whenever it seemed insurmountable, I would consider the rewrite equal to work for another college degree (”think of the education you’re getting!”).
Lori, this is so, so true. Forget an MFA. One of the best educations you’ll get is to become your story’s Dr. Frankenstein and rework it from the inside out.
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By the way, I’m often asked what will happen to my other manuscripts under the bed, and I think readers have the impression I can just blow the dust off and hand them in…ta da!
Nope. Not hardly. I’m a much better writer now than I was. I’ve been cannibalizing characters and themes from my earlier work, but the rest of those manuscripts will stay hidden. And that’s OK with me.
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Kris, fear of failure–oh yeah. And fear of not living up to your potential. Who wants to go through life with a C average?
I’m sincerely looking forward to reading THE LIFE YOU’VE IMAGINED, and not just for this backstory; REAL LIFE & LIARS was one of my faves of ’09.
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I’m someone who can not for the life of her plot. I tried and that book was never written (yet). The result is that I set aside a finished project and then go back to it months down the road. I’ve worked hard on my ability to read my own stuff like I was CPing someone else’s. The result is that to date this year, I’ve trashed almost 4 entire drafts. In one book, I saved 2 pages, in another, less than a paragraph. In the third, there are a few scattered pages that survived and in the fourth, it’s roughly 2/3′s new.
I wish I could plot but by the time I go through and ‘fix’ what’s wrong, I’d end up with more frustration than just junking it and pulling out the only really workable parts. The book I’m working on now has been able to keep less than a quarter of the original but the end result – I hope – is a cleaner, more focused storyline.
We’ll see what happens when I pull it out from under the bed in six months to revise again:)
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“new excitement for the story by marrying what I already knew about the characters and their tale with new possibilities.”
That’s it, right there. The characters wanting to do something different. That gets me through the slumps.
Great post, Therese.
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I like to think of it as re-visioning, not so much editing. I remember saying once that there was no way in hell I was going to change/add one more word to Amazon Connection. Ever. I was done. I’d worked so hard on it, loved the story concept, and had gone off in my corner to hone the story one more time after several other ‘editing’ processes. Then a member of my writing group asked me what I would do if an editor wanted me to make changes. Of course, my instant reply was – if it meant a contract, yes, I’d dig right in. Fortunately, I landed a contract, made a few more changes, and learned a lot through the process! Like Teri, you just never give up on a story you belive in!
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