Should you finish and submit, finish and trunk or abandon mediocre stories?

johnhallow said:

Sometimes what you're writing doesn't pan out to be as amazing as you'd thought it would. It's great in your head, but doesn't have the same glow when it's down on paper. In these cases, do you think it's better to finish, polish and submit MSes that didn't turn out to have as much potential as you'd hoped, or to abandon them in favour of something new?

I'm asking because when you submit stories you're (presumably) competing with lots of very good MSes, so it would seem that an okay/mediocre* book isn't worth the time investment.

*By mediocre I don't mean a bland or badly written book; I mean a story that's good but nothing mind blowing compared to what's out there.

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You've sorta answered your own question.

If a novel isn't working, 'polishing it' isn't realistic. (Imagine and old beat up shoe that's highly polished. ugh. )

I will say this though. It may sometimes be possible to take a previous idea and rework in down the road.

but trunk novels are in the trunk for a reason...

How do you know it's mediocre? Are beta readers telling you this? If it's your own judgment, sometimes we can become so familiar with our own stories that they don't seem to have the spark that we thought they had when they were only in our heads. The only way you are going to know if it's truly mediocre is to get it into the hands of beta readers, agents, etc. and get their feedback.

And let's not forget, mediocre is subjective. What may be mediocre to some readers will be an amazing story to others.

I suppose it depends how accurate your assessment of your own work is...

Nothing I've written has ever matched the glory I envisioned - it's an impossible standard.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

This depends on you.

Are you the sort who uses perfection as an excuse for failure? If that's the case, finish the ms, polish it, send it to betas and then query it if the betas like it.

Are you the sort you keeps going when you should quit? Then trunk the ms and start a better one. You may find you can cannibalize bits of the old ms for the new one.

If you know yourself well, you'll know the answer to whether you're just quitting to quit or you're quitting for a good reason.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

When I'm faced with stories that aren't working, I put them to one side. Sometimes I'll come back to them later, but it's a waste of time polishing them when the flaws are much more basic.

However, this is in the context of finishing and submitting a lot of stuff. If you're like me and you often finish things, but this project just isn't cutting it, then putting it aside isn't going to be a problem. But if you find you never finishing anything, because it never meets your standards, you need to change your view on it.

You should finish the story, because if you don't finish it, when and where will you learn to finish (and how will you know whether it's truly mediocre)?

As to submitting it: if it's truly mediocre, don't. The secret to a successful career is to never publish anything bad.

James D. Macdonald said:

The secret to a successful career is to never publish anything bad.

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You can publish stuff that's bad? So . . . if you can't publish anything, that means it's even worse than . . .

caw

If I feel like something isn't working, either because I don't feel good about it or it's gotten some feedback that made me feel that way, I put it aside for a time--sometimes years. Then I look back and rewrite it. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I don't like the thought of giving up on anything. The inside of my trunk rotates.

Yes. You should do one of those things, but it depends entirely on the story and your own motivation. There can be value in fixing something, even if you never intend to publish it, and there can be value in walking away.

If I feel something's not up to snuff, I keep revising it until it IS snuffy.

I do tend to keep ideas in the bunny hutch and outline stages for a long time before actually writing copy, so I guess my mediocre ideas self-destruct before they get to the draft stage. Once I have even the start of a first draft, I don't give up. Went that route early on, and it led to a lot of abandoned starts and nothing completed, nothing subbed.

As others have said, you have to be careful about trusting your current enthusiasm for a piece. Nothing down on paper or in pixels shines like that scintillating Arkenstone of a new-born idea. That doesn't necessarily mean your execution is mediocre.

If you can get good betas, get them. But sometimes you just have to sub and let the market decide. If nothing else, you'll start growing your rejection-proof hide, an essential in the writer's armor.

Yeah, at least have a go at revising it. How else will you learn how to revise?

Also, you might find the editing/revising sequence lends some distance that wasn't there when you were creating things. That's how it often happens with me.

johnhallow said:

Sometimes what you're writing doesn't pan out to be as amazing as you'd thought it would.

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Never had that experience, sorry. Besides, it's not the writing, it's you and a lack of confidence.

Jeff

There's a difference between "mediocre" and "not as great as you thought it would be". If it's mediocre, you need to figure out how to make it good; if it's just not the masterpiece you expected, polish that sucker and submit.

I follow the Wendig rule: "Finish your shit".

Abandoning a story when it's not working is easy. Finishing it, and fixing it (or if it doesn't pan out, trunking it) is the hard route but it's much more rewarding.

The only possible way to know whether something is good or bad is to submit it over and over and over until someone buys it, or everyone out there agrees it's bad.

Writers are always the worst judges of their own work, and the piece of "mediocre" writing you don't submit is a possible masterpiece buried forever.

James D. Macdonald said:

As to submitting it: if it's truly mediocre, don't. The secret to a successful career is to never publish anything bad.

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If this were true, darned near every successful writer I've ever known would still be unpublished. Most of them have published some seriously bad writing from time to time. Sales show it, and they admit it. If it's bad enough to kill a career, no one is going to buy it.

I would say trunk it. Work on something else, come back to it later. You may simply be getting tired of working on it, or there may be pieces and bits you can cannibalize for other works. You might come back and see exactly where things went wrong and fix that one bit and turn it completely around.

My best piece of advice, never toss anything.

The first novel I wrote, IMO is the worst thing I ever wrote. I do however think it is the best story I ever wrote. I think the way I wrote it was horrible but the basic idea and plot are both very good. It has been in a trunk for 5 years. I don't think I will ever give up on it completely. There are parts that I really like. some day I may sit down and use it as an outline and star from scratch with the same story. Maybe it will turn into something better than the original. I don't think trunking a novel necessarily kills it for eternity. The idea will always be there at least for me.

The Scip said:

The first novel I wrote, IMO is the worst thing I ever wrote. I do however think it is the best story I ever wrote. I think the way I wrote it was horrible but the basic idea and plot are both very good. It has been in a trunk for 5 years. I don't think I will ever give up on it completely. There are parts that I really like. some day I may sit down and use it as an outline and star from scratch with the same story. Maybe it will turn into something better than the original. I don't think trunking a novel necessarily kills it for eternity. The idea will always be there at least for me.

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Funny, I am in the opposite position. I will never write something as funny as my first novel, but it seriously lacked story. It was just a flame-thrower of funny. Nobody is likely to ever see it, because it lacks any kind of backbone whatsoever as a novel.

I'm jealous. Your problem means you can salvage yours. Mine, not as much.

You gave us just three choices! I hate either/or choices. Too constricting for me, too much like you're a stern teacher laying down the law to unruly students.

So I suggest a fourth: Finish it or not, whichever feels right to you. But mine it for treasure amidst the trash.

I want to know what your secret is for writing mediocre stories. Mine never rise to that exalted level.

caw