Giving up on a story

Some people on this forum throw nothing away. They'll work and work until they sell something. Other people are eager and willing to toss stuff out and start again. I think you'll get as many different opinions on this as if you'd asked, "How much should I outline?"

Do what makes you feel comfortable. If you don't even want to post in SYW, it sounds like you want to trunk this.

I find that every project gets to the stage where you're sick of it and it just doesn't seem like it's going to work. My advice would be to keep going.

I wouldn't give up. I would keep trying or you'll always give up. It will get better, just keep writing.

Some stuff I start and it just doesn't work. It seemed like a good idea when I started, but then I can't get it going properly, or whatever.

After I've tried for a bit and it's really not happening, I put it in the 'unfinished' folder, in case it might be useful in future, and then I move on to something else.

If I kept finding that this happened, and I was leaving more than I was finishing, then I would think there was some kind of problem. But as it's only some stuff, then so long as I finish and sub enough for my W1S1 commitments, then that's OK.

Other things, I do finish, but it's rubbish.
So that gets filed too and I move on.
Maybe in future I'll drag it out and do something with it.
Or maybe not.
Who know what the future will hold.

But I don't waste too much time working on something that really isn't going anywhere. If I did that I'd spend the whole month working (or not working) on something that was never going to get subbed.
And then I wouldn't get my subs in for the month.
For me that would be a form of procrastination, I have to recognise when working on something is not a good use of my time.

I have about a 10:1 ratio of ideas I can get excited about to ideas I have time to work through...thus I'm pretty ruthless about abandoning ideas if they're not working.

BUT

I keep some notes on those ideas, and often find a way to work them in to other projects...

Keep it around, but move on to something else...that's what I do. There have been a few that I go back to long after I shelved them, but that list is few and far between.

I'm one of the those who throw nothing away. If you're over-working it and it doesn't feel natural, slide it away. Down the road you may find something else that is also missing something, be able to pull the other thing out, and put two unlike ideas together with wild success.

Also, SYW is scary at first, but nothing to be embarrassed about. Down the road, if you take a professional track, your writing will be put up to editors and agents. Your peers are a good place to cut your teeth on crit, and also, if SYW has good Mods and good people who do some policing. No one is going to tell you, "You suck. Quit writing."

It happens to me quite a bit, actually--putting a story aside because I think it's silly. A story will wake me in the middle of the night--as one did last night--and I'll have to get up and write it out. Then, in the clear light of day, it seems silly and old fashioned. I'm beginning to think my writing style is anachronistic and I'm a throw-back. Right now I'm poised on the verge of just forgetting the whole "writing thing". I've not put my work on SYW for that reason. But, you know, it's silly for us to be embarrassed this way. Crits are good. Crits are helpful.

I'll make a deal with you, gettingby: I'll put up the first 500 words or so of that short story in SYW, and you put up one you feel the best about. I think what we both need is to bite the bullet and put our work out there for crit. What do you say?

Ari Meermans said:

I'll make a deal with you, gettingby: I'll put up the first 500 words or so of that short story in SYW, and you put up one you feel the best about. I think what we both need is to bite the bullet and put our work out there for crit. What do you say?

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If this is done (both of you), please PM me with the link, and I will stop by do a fair crit. Please, remember to post what you are looking for (be specific). If a line-by-line helps, ask for them. If you want general feedback, say so at the top of the thread.

C.H. Valentino said:

If this is done (both of you), please PM me with the link, and I will stop by do a fair crit. Please, remember to post what you are looking for (be specific). If a line-by-line helps, ask for them. If you want general feedback, say so at the top of the thread.

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Thank you! I appreciate the offer. It's better to know one way or the other than to never know. I'll go ahead and go first. Give me a moment to copy and paste the first 523 words in "Other SYW". Either a line-by-line or general comments work for me.

p.s. Putting my work "out there" is hard; but I'm tired of being reticent and I would like honest crits.

I throw nothing out. But I have about a dozen like this. I personally rejected them because I could not - for a variety of reasons - finish them. But I am determined to make them work, somehow, some day, or steal the best part of each and use it somewhere else.

So far I have done that only once, pulled a story out of my personal rejection drawer and forced myself to redo and finish it. And I sold it.

Yeah, it bugs me they are there. They are like zombie-stories, not quite alive, yet not completely dead.

I was organizing my story spreadsheet yesterday. I've written (a complete first draft of) 46 stories since 2007. I've trunked seven of those, meaning I don't think there was anything redeemable (and three of those were "hint fiction", 25-word stories). A half dozen are sold, another half dozen are on submission, and the rest are split between needing a complete rewrite or revision.

A lot of those stories I gave up on, at the time, because I didn't have the chops to pull off when I drafted them but the idea was still solid. Never throw that stuff away. I've gone back and written sequels to some of those drafts and sold those.

So, when an idea seems like too it's too big to do right? I totally get that. Put it aside, because one day you'll look back and know exactly what you need to do to fix it. Or you'll recycle the idea and you can look back at that early draft and use it as a point of reference (that whole seeing where you've been to know where you are thing).

I have one story I love but cannot make work. I've messed with it so much that I've forgotten what it's meant to be about. But I've kept it. I don't want ever to part with it....

I agree with setting a story aside for later use and never giving up. If the idea meant something to you then it's still viable and will be later on.

I don't through anything out, but I will put some stories on the shelf. I might revisit them later or I might not.

I have some stories that i have spent a ridiculous amount of time on, but they just didn't seem quite right, even if I "finished" them. Rather than wasting more time forcing it, I would rather write something new in those instances.

Usually though, if there was an idea there that got you started writing, there is something retrievable. You just have to figure out HOW to retrieve it - and be ruthless about discarding the elements that weren't working (which could well be 90% of what you wrote!)

I finish every story I start. Heinlein's Rules usually separate successful writers from unsuccessful writers, and Rule Two is Finish What Your Start.

I also follow rules four and five, which are You Must Put Your Story on the Market, and You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold.

I don't decide whether or not it works, editors do, and if I keep it out there long enough, I've found some editor will decide it does.

I think every writer should read Robert J. Sawyer's breakdown on Heinlein's Rules, and believe everything Sawyer says about them.

http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

Jamesaritchie said:

I finish every story I start. Heinlein's Rules usually separate successful writers from unsuccessful writers, and Rule Two is Finish What Your Start.

I also follow rules four and five, which are You Must Put Your Story on the Market, and You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold.

I don't decide whether or not it works, editors do, and if I keep it out there long enough, I've found some editor will decide it does.

I think every writer should read Robert J. Sawyer's breakdown on Heinlein's Rules, and believe everything Sawyer says about them.

http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

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Thanks for posting that James. Hmmm might be rethinking this.

This seems like a good strategy for a writer who is at a certain point of maturity.

However if you are starting out and your work is garbage it isn't going to do one much good to keep sending out a bad story without extensively reworking it.

So rather than revisit old stories that I know are bad and are going to need a lot of work, I would rather write new ones which I know will need less work, because these days I have a much better idea of what I'm doing

Gettingby, that is a hard question. For example, I have a story that I wrote ages ago. My writing teacher had told me to try and get it published. Another teacher liked it and asked if he could use it in his classes. Since I recently started writing fiction again, I got out this story and dusted it off. Time to try and get it published, right? But when I reread it, I decided it needed work. I tried to revamp it, but I think I made it worse (it's ok, I still have the original). So I'm putting it aside for now. I can't completely let it go though.

Other stories I'm like Ari, I am really excited about the idea at first, and then my inner critic starts telling me how stupid it is. I have to fight to remember how I felt when the idea was new to me, and hope that readers will feel the same way. I've worked those stories through (three now), and I think the results were worth it.

So I guess, my answer is never throw it away, but sometimes it's good to put it aside for awhile. However, if you find you are wanting to put every story aside, then perhaps it's time to ignore the inner critic, and trust the instinct that first "brought" you the story idea.

Jamesaritchie said:

I also follow rules four and five, which are You Must Put Your Story on the Market, and You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold.

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I love this. I just read last night in Writer's Digest magazine that The Help (best selling book and now a movie!, certainly one of my favorites!) received 60 rejections from agents. The 61st agent accepted it and the rest is history.

I am impressed that Kathyrn Stockett, had the tenacity to keep going. I'm afraid I would have given up long before 60 rejects, and yet, thank goodness she didn't.

So, yeah, keep it on the market until it has sold. Solid advice.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that before.

Mad Rabbits said:

Thanks for posting that James. Hmmm might be rethinking this.

This seems like a good strategy for a writer who is at a certain point of maturity.

However if you are starting out and your work is garbage it isn't going to do one much good to keep sending out a bad story without extensively reworking it.

So rather than revisit old stories that I know are bad and are going to need a lot of work, I would rather write new ones which I know will need less work, because these days I have a much better idea of what I'm doing

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Just the opposite. This is the strategy new writers must follow if they ever want to be seasoned, mature, professionals. That's the point. Writers do not follow Heinlein's Rules because they are mature professionals, they've managed to become seasoned professionals precisely because they followed Heinlein's Rules from day one.

It DOES do a world of good to keep sending out stories, regardless of what you think about their quality. This is the message of Heinlein's Rules. Frankly, new writers usually have no clue about what is and isn't bad, what works and what doesn't, what editors will buy, before or after asking for a rewrite, etc. New writers also generally don't know how to rewrite and revise to make a story publishable. This is where editorial feedback matters again. Reworking, in other words, won't work, unless someone who knows what needs reworking points out the problems.

And even when something is truly horrible, feedback matters. You won't get feedback from editors unless editors see the story.

And as Heinlein pointed out, if you keep sending the story out long enough, sooner or later you'll find an editor with no taste, or an editor with a hole to fill and nothing to fill it, so even your bad stories will probably sell. This is almost certainly true. Sooner or later, some editor will need something fast, and will at the very least, ask you for a rewrite.

Read Sawyer's post again. Half of all writers fail on each rule. He isn't talking about mature professionals here. They know better. He's talking about new writers. Better than ninety percent of all new writers find a reason to ignore at least one of these rules. When they do, they go into the fifty percent who probably won't succeed because of whichever rule they ignore.

You can't pick and choose which rules you will follow, and which you will ignore. The rules are all or nothing, and rule five is at least as important as rule one, especially for new writers.

Pretty much every full-time pro I know uses these rules. All five of them. But they became full-time pros because they followed them early, as soon as they discovered them.

Excuses abound, but as simple as these rules sound, very, very few new writers manage to follow all five. Those who do will almost certainly succeed to some degree. Those who do not may sell something here and there, if they have enough talent, but they won't sell much, they won't sell often, and they won't become seasoned, mature pros.

Point taken. Editorial feedback from the journals I have submitted to is rare though. larger lit journals generally don't offer feedback, just a yes or no. And I suspect if I keep sending out bad stories to a particular journal they just won't read future ones I send.

I would rather only send a story that I am happy with, that I have shown to at least a couple of people who I can expect to give valid feedback, and that I have edited to my satisfaction.

Some of my stories are only part way through that process. I do usually go back and try to get them to the finish though, if I think the germ of a good story is there.

Mad Rabbits said:

Point taken. Editorial feedback from the journals I have submitted to is rare though. larger lit journals generally don't offer feedback, just a yes or no. And I suspect if I keep sending out bad stories to a particular journal they just won't read future ones I send.

I would rather only send a story that I am happy with, that I have shown to at least a couple of people who I can expect to give valid feedback, and that I have edited to my satisfaction.

Some of my stories are only part way through that process. I do usually go back and try to get them to the finish though, if I think the germ of a good story is there.

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If your story is good enough, close enough to publishable, you'll get feedback. I've yet to find a magazine of any type that doesn't give feedback, if the story deserves it, including the large lit journals. If you never get feedback, that, in itself, is telling feedback.

And it's just wrong to think sending out bad stories means future stories won't be read. It just doesn't work this way. Good grief, William Saroyan sent out more than four thousand short stories before he sold one. Four thousand, most of them horrible.

He even had the gall to write to an editor saying he was going to mail that editor a new story everyday for a month. This was considered very bad form, even then.

He did it anyway, and along about day twenty he mailed that editor a story with the original title of The Flying Trapeze. Despite the thousands of bad stories he sent here, there, and everywhere, and despite having the gall to flood this editor with stories, the editor still read the story, and Saroyan became famous almost overnight.

Besides, if writers knew the difference between good and bad stories, we'd never write a story that didn't sell.

Judging the quality of a story is not your job. Ever. That's the editor's job, and as one famous SF editor said, "Your job is writing the story, mine is judging it. Don't try to do my job for me. You do your job, and let me do mine."

The trick is simple, though very, very few manage to accomplish it. Finish them when you start them. Don't put one aside and start another. That way lies damnation. If you always finish one before starting another, you won't have stories you need to go back through.

Heinlein's Rules matter. All the time, every time. These are not really writing rules, they're business rules, rules for success. Half of all who try fail because they fail to follow these rules, and failing to follow one of them, any one of them, is the same as not following any of them.

You don't want to follow this rule, another writer doesn't want to follow that rule, etc. It's all the same. Fail to follow any given rule of the five, and you fall into the fifty percent who fails because of not following that rule.