How often do you give up ?

Axelle · Mar 29, 2008

Over the years, I've written a great many opening paragraphs. Sometimes, I made it as far as the first page - or even several pages. Then two weeks later, I usually ended up thinking "this is worthless" and I threw it all away...

...okay, I didn't. I kept all these openings and I still look at them sometimes, when I'm in a nostalgic mood. Makes me feel dizzy to look at all these novels I did not write.

So do you often start on a project not to finish it ? At which point are you more or less certain to go all the way to the end ? Isn't it terribly frustrating to throw months of work and fifty pages of text in the garbage can and to move onto the next idea ? How do you cope with that ?

I dunno if the question has already been asked - probably, but I couldn't find the original thread. Couldn't really word a search specific enough, to be sincere. But anyway, even if the question was already asked, you might have changed your mind since then.

giusti · Mar 29, 2008

Personally, I leave everything open. When I started writing, short stories didn't seem to interest me. I would force myself to write some, but practically every idea I came up with was epic. So I decided that I would just go ahead and write every novel idea that came my direction, no matter what it was.

Of course, it left me with a lot of unfinished works. After a while, I realized that this was okay. Because every now and then, I would run across an unfinished work, five, or ten, or twenty thousand words long, and work on it some more. Eventually, I started finishing novels.

So I think the key is to keep everything. If it's truly crap, you'll come back to it, and every time you do, you'll think, okay this one will go nowhere. But the ones that might actually work will probably turn into something eventually.

That's my take on it.

-giusti

Elodie-Caroline · Mar 29, 2008

I have 133 pages of a novel that I started back in 2004, my very first attempt at writing a story since I left school. But then I got the idea for something else, started that, finished it and the sequel. Now I'm thinking of a third book in the series, the biography of one of my characters, which I already have a 25 page mini biography for.
I also have a small outline for a completely separate story about a kidnapping that I shall start sometime.
I always keep my work with the intentions of going back to it.

Elodie

Mumut · Mar 29, 2008

I don't start anything without it having been in my mind for quite a long time. I'm quite sure I want to write about it when I start. I've written half-a-dozen children's stories, same number for the 10 - 12 age and I'm writing the third in a YA series with the first two published. The earlier completed dozen have a lot of editing before they're ready for publication, but I haven't started a story and left it after several pages.

steveg144 · Mar 29, 2008

Never throw anything away. Seriously. Even if you "abandon" it, you may find it useful for other purposes. Example: my first novel (2007) was a big, sprawling monstrosity. But some of the chapters were quite good (ok, they were salvageable, with the potential to be quite good...). So I broke them out and have started reworking them and tightening them up, turning them into standalone short stories. I've gotten five into circulation so far, and have gotten two of them picked up. So I now think of my first novel as "ore," to be mined for little 2000-3000 word gems.

angeliz2k · Mar 29, 2008

As a much greater person than me once said, "never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in."

All those poor orphaned paragraphs and pages are worth something, right? If you go back to them, they just might spark an idea. So don't give up on them totally.

As for me, I have a ton of funny little bits here and there; usually they're more like 5 to 10 pages. There was a long time when I couldn't get anything started for the life of me, so I ended up starting and stopping. I have one abandoned piece that's probably 60k words. Thinking of which, I should revisit that. I must never give in, right?

Michael Davis · Mar 29, 2008

Let me shrink the "thrown away" from a story to a scene or paragraph. If the passage is good, really good, then why toss it? I've got a folder of paragraphs, scenes, and vignettes that (after I wrote them) didn't quite fit in the storyline. Like decorations in a house. Some may not go with one theme, but they work well in another home. They may have looked OK at the start, but as the story evolves and morphs, it just didn't fit with the flow anymore. But I never abandon them, especially when I love the wording, the emotion, the flow.

I've used several scenes/vignettes I took out of one story and used in another. Course I have to reshape and mold them, but if its reusable, them I do it. Hate to toss something that reads well, but just needs a new home.

crrazyjane · Mar 29, 2008

I spent about two years, on and off, convinced I should try to write bodice-rippers, but my bodice-rippers kept turning into epic fantasy. Very BAD epic fantasy. So I gave up and decided to stop trying to turn myself into something I'm not, and stick now to the fantasy, and leave my bodices generally unripped.

C'est la vie - sometimes you've got to go through a bit of trial and error before you figure out which story is the right one for you to be writing.

I do still have all those false-start romances on my hard drive. Maybe someday when I learn how to lighten up I'll drag them out and give myself a flashy nom de plume.

Joe Moore · Mar 29, 2008

steveg144 said:
Never throw anything away. Seriously.

This is great advice. With the availability of huge hard drives, storage is no longer an issue. And you never know what didn't work today will work tomorrow. I just started my 5th thriller in the Cotten Stone series and wound up digging out a chapter I wrote for an unfinished novel in 1991, rewriting it, and using it for a chapter in my WIP. Think of your unused paragraphs, pages and chapters as remnants of cloth on a tailor's floor. Something can always be made from them. Good luck.

Axelle · Mar 29, 2008

Oh well, at least there's a consensus here. Most of what I abandoned was real crap, though (I was pretty young, too), so I'm not sure I could use it again, but I guess I'll keep it, if only for nostalgia's sake.
But that did teach me something - when writing, better to write about a subject you know and love. That way you're a lot less likely to give up.

zornhau · Mar 29, 2008

Your capital is the ability to write good prose. The prose itself is expendable. Bin it all. And, if you keep getting stuck, read the Uncle Jim thread from the start, or read Dwight V Swain.

ishtar'sgate · Mar 29, 2008

Axelle said:
Over the years, I've written a great many opening paragraphs. Sometimes, I made it as far as the first page - or even several pages. Then two weeks later, I usually ended up thinking "this is worthless" and I threw it all away...

So do you often start on a project not to finish it ? At which point are you more or less certain to go all the way to the end ? Isn't it terribly frustrating to throw months of work and fifty pages of text in the garbage can and to move onto the next idea ? How do you cope with that ?

It's possible you simply haven't found the right opening for your project. I wrestled with the first chapter of my medieval novel for quite some time before I landed on the one I kept. I can't even remember how many times I changed it. My original opening began with a young girl following her brother out to poach game. My final opening began with a village funeral. Far cry from where I started.
It hasn't gotten any better. I have two WIPs - another historical and a contemporary thriller. All I've done is double my trouble

Although I'm happy with my story ideas, the perfect openings elude me. I just keep approaching the story from different angles, waiting for something to click. I'm getting close but I've discarded three or four openings and several first chapters.
You might try that. If you love your idea, try approaching the story from different angles until you're satisfied. Good luck!
Linnea

Axelle · Mar 29, 2008

Thanks Linn, but actually I don't have any problem with my current story (well, I do have to rewrite the opening, but only for plot reasons). It's just that, in the past, writing an opening only to throw it away happened a lot to me, and I was curious whether it happened to other people as well, and what people's experience is in general with regards to openings and/or ideas. Finding the right opening sure can be tricky !

OddButInteresting · Mar 29, 2008

The way I see it, giving up is an essential part of the process.

I have a habit of shelving ideas after a couple of days/weeks, but if I reckon they've got potential, I'll always come back to them. Always.

I dunno if this is the case with you, but for me the process goes something like this:

Conception (Creative High) > Stewing Period >Creative High > Stewing Period...

And it goes on until I have the Finished Product.

A "Stewing Period" could last hours, days, months, or even years. Heck, Lord of The Rings was Tolkein's life's work. It's not like he threw it together over a weekend in the country.

If I wrote the whole thing in one sitting, it would be shit (please forgive the "colourful metaphor"). I need to put a distance between myself and my ideas for a while so that they can develop subconsciously, and thus, freely. If my "Creative High" holds-up for too long, it informs me that I'm getting complacent.

maestrowork · Mar 29, 2008

I've started on things aplenty. I don't consider "giving up" though. I'll get back to them eventually. In fact, last year I finished a piece I started about 8 years ago, and I submitted it for publication. It's good to start something when the idea is fresh, but I don't think it's an obligation to finish something you just started, right NOW. Eventually, yes.

DamaNegra · Mar 29, 2008

I finish about 1 in every 5 novels I start. Nah, I'm just making myself feel better here. I've written only 2 novels all the way to the end, both of which need serious rewriting. I've maybe made an attempt at 10 or 15 novels. Most of them suck so much I'll never get back to them. Only about 2 ideas are worth saving. Depressing, huh?

Kid At <3 · Mar 29, 2008

Always.

Axelle · Mar 29, 2008

I finish about 1 in every 5 novels I start. Nah, I'm just making myself feel better here. I've written only 2 novels all the way to the end, both of which need serious rewriting. I've maybe made an attempt at 10 or 15 novels. Most of them suck so much I'll never get back to them. Only about 2 ideas are worth saving. Depressing, huh?

2 novels out of 15 ideas ? That makes it, what, a 17% keeper rate ? Not that bad

Thank you all for your answer !

Varthikes · Mar 29, 2008

I've never given up.

Well, okay. There was that one screenplay I started writing for Star Trek. But I gave up on that because I knew there wasn't any chance of it getting accepted. So, I threw away what I had of the script, but I kept the basic idea of the story so I could recycle it for my own series. (Their loss if they don't want it).

And, there were a few stories I threw out because they didn't really have a theme.

dragoon_elf · Mar 29, 2008

I agree with what everyone is saying.

When I was 18, I wrote short stories like crazy. It's what I wanted to do, be a short story writer. There was one story that I started to write, and only wrote one page of it. Just one page.

College came and I did immature college things everyone did and wrote very little. That one page was left unattended to.

I'm now 23 and writing my first novel. I have 140+ pages so far and I'm going strong. This novel is based and starts (in a slightly edited form) with that one page I wrote and kept when I was 18.

Novelhistorian · Mar 29, 2008

Never throw anything away. But it helps if you've got a file manager or search engine that can find the right bit for you when you're cruising along and think, "Didn't I write this scene in a previous book?"

My current WIP is a case in point. For ten months, I fought my way through the first four chapters, rewriting them a zillion times and tossing out previous versions like popcorn. Except I indexed the rejects, using a handy program called dtSearch. So when things started to move, finally, they really moved, because once I got to Chapter 5, I found uses for huge sections of stuff I'd tossed out before. Partly as a result, I've written four more chapters in the last three weeks. Some stuff I wrote isn't usable, much of the rest in a different form. But I tell you--I felt great feeling a chapter that gave me fits (cut it or keep it? cut it or keep it? aw, hell, cut it) suddenly seemed perfect someplace else.

III · Mar 29, 2008

I've given up on querying for the time being. Does that count?

Constantine K · Mar 29, 2008

I've taken the advice given in the movie Never Back Down quite seriously. I never back down.

Mainly because I won't start a story until I'm pretty sure it'll work.

Andre_Laurent · Mar 31, 2008

I never toss anything. I have some beginnings sitting on my drive...and I'll get back to them when the time is right.

bluntforcetrauma · Mar 31, 2008

There's only one I haven't finished. It's a novella length story. I'll slog through no matter what. Sometimes a good story comes out of the bigger work.

How often do you give up ?

Axelle

giusti

Elodie-Caroline

Mumut

Well begun is half done...

steveg144

Crusty Polemicist

angeliz2k

never mind the shorty

Michael Davis

crrazyjane

Joe Moore

Axelle

zornhau

Swordsman

ishtar'sgate

living in the past

Axelle

OddButInteresting

Officially a practicing Novelist!

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray

DamaNegra

Mexican on the loose!

Kid At <3

Axelle

Varthikes

Dragon Writer

dragoon_elf

Novelhistorian

III

rockin the suburbs

Constantine K

Andre_Laurent

bluntforcetrauma

Esquire