After much avoidance and guilt for not understanding why I was avoiding, I have realized that I do not want to do anything further with the first draft of my first novel. Why? Because it does not resonate with the story that I hear in my head or feel in my body. Not because the story isn’t interesting or the dialogue isn’t sharp enough, but rather it doesn’t sound or feel like what I really want to say. I was attempting to fictionalize a memoir and it just didn’t come out right; like a cake that doesn’t completely rise in the oven. You take it out, look and at and think to yourself, “Well crap. It’s not supposed to turn out like that.” I have absolutely no desire at this time to attempt a rewrite so this novel is going to be tucked away until some time in the future when I want to dust it off and form it into something I feel better about.
My plan is to write an entirely different story which is what I am going to do. I am taking everything I learned along the way and incorporating all that into the next novel. Keep going. Keep writing. Keep refining my craft until I have a finished product that sounds and reads exactly the way I imagined it would.
And that is my new plan. Wish me luck!
You have made a very tough decision and only you will ever really understand how right or wrong that decision might be. Others may try to persuade you that you ought to press on with the story (God knows, they have with me!) but if it feels WRONG then there is (as they said in Top Gun) no point in pushing a bad position.
Two years ago, I had to abandon (into a drawer) a 234,000 word novel that had begun to ‘wander’ with no real prospect of an ending within the next few years. I would still be persisting with it now if I hadn’t slammed that drawer shut and cried ‘ENOUGH!’
So I began a brand new project – and spent the subsequent two years explaining to people why I’d apparently dumped three years worth of effort.
Go with it – you sound like you have learned a lot from your work to date. And take heart that something worthwhile will grow from the fertile forest loam that it has created.
I appreciate your comment and support Andrew. This outcome is certainly not what was expected but then again few things every really are. I am looking forward to this next chapter and discovering where it will take me.