"Good, but not Quite There. . ."

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Riley

They won't let me be good
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Does anyone else deal with this? What do you do if/when you run into the problem?

I've decided that my current WIP, Undermined, is fairly good, but not quite there yet. I haven't finished writing it, but if the first 32,000 words aren't up to snuff, then the rest won't be.

Actually, it's the plots that bother me. When I started writing Undermined, I intended to make a series of books with two characters who "hop" to parallel worlds to find treasures to take back to their world to help pay off debts that caused foreign galaxies to launch a massive attack on the Solar System. In each book, there would be a subplot to support the main plot--which was, of course, to get those treasures.

Now I have something called the Final Dreamer (which was planned for book five but somehow ended up in book one), a hero who belongs where he is but somehow got tangled up with the Final Dreamer (Molgrim, who was not supposed to feature in the last book), a major war, and a political intrigue. All of it written in a good way, but not quite. . . you get the point.

Whew, that got long.
 

bluntforcetrauma

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I don't think we will ever be satisfied with our own writing, hence, constantly trying to improve.
 

NicoleMD

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That's what second drafts are for. (And third and fourth...) First drafts are allowed to suck horribly.

Nicole
 

nevada

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Finish it first before you decide anything. most likely in the next draft you'll dump the first three chapters, something you never thought about will unfold half way through that you decide you must bring in earlier. All sorts of things happen after you finish the first draft. So finish it first. Then, and only then, are you allowed to decide if things work or not. And then you move onto your second draft and fix things. The only thing you are allowed to worry about now is finishing it. Nothing matters, nothing means anything until it's finished.
 

Cassidy

writing for kids and teens
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Yes, absolutely. I'm there now. I have a third draft of a YA novel and I'm just not quite happy with it. What I find frustrating is trying to get a perspective at this point. I took a few months away from it between drafts 1 and 2, which was helpful... but now I know every word by heart pretty much and am finding it very hard to assess it accurately. Time for feedback from a couple of good critiquers, I guess....
 

Riley

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Thanks for the quick responses, guys. Of course I plan on finishing this novel. I swore to myself I would finish it editing and all, no matter how painful it was or how pointless it seemed. I just know the writing isn't up to snuff. It's almost there, closer than I've ever been.

What's strange is, as soon as I told myself the writing wasn't quite the quality it needed to be, I was able to write twice as much as I have been. I wrote 3000 words in one sitting when my norm is half that.

I guess a part of me is thinking, 'yay, pressure's off.' No, it is not, creepy little person-voice sitting in the back of my head. I still expect the best and nothing but.
 

Namatu

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As I finished the first draft of my WIP, things kept developing that complicated the plot, added more texture, and required another pass to thread things through. I've done a second draft and now I'm rewriting the entire thing because the story developed so much more after those two drafts that it changed too much to be handled in a mere edit. I know the characters better. I know the world better. I also know all the subtext that started flying around by the end of these drafts. It's taking a long time, but the story is the better for it.
 

Phaeal

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You're having a mid-book crisis. It's a loss of confidence that happens to pretty much everyone.

Here's what you do:

You keep writing this book, reciting the mantra "First drafts are allowed to be crap."

Here's what you don't do:

Start writing on another project. It's crucial to complete what you start, especially if you've gotten as far as 32,000 words and you feel it's "fairly good." Whether the end product is publishable or not, it's by finishing it and revising it that you'll learn how to write.
 

waylander

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Finish it. Find a bunch of people to read it. Listen to them. Rewrite it.
Repeat several times.

Version 6 of my novel got me an agent
 

dirtsider

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Definitely finish it. Even if this current draft gets totally re-written in the second draft and beyond, you'll have learned from this current draft.

You're doing better than I am, currently. I'm only doing a few words each time I sit down to write. The rest of the time, I'm doing research since I'm pretty much still in the world building stage. But I'm also forcing myself to sit down and write as well, even if it is only one night a week at this point.
 
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