After yesterday’s post on how to start your story, several of you left interesting comments, but none more so than Camille:
The sound of paper shredding, a toilet flushing. Five months of her life, like refuse, gone.
Randy sez: I worked on my first novel for two and a half YEARS, then realized that it had a major problem that would prevent it from ever getting published. So I flushed it and started a new one.
That flush was metaphorical, by the way. Of course no writer EVER throws anything away, right folks? We keep it, because it might come in useful. Fact is, I flushed the next novel too. Then I finished the next one (but it never got published). Then I started a sequel, which I never finished. But . . . here’s the point:
There was one particular scene in that sequel that I liked a lot. Years later, when I was working on my novel RETRIBUTION, (which DID get published), I needed that scene. I went back and found it and reworked it a bit and used it. It’s one of my favorite scenes in RETRIBUTION.
Never throw anything away! And never let those voices in your head tell you that your time was wasted.
Here is the truth: no time you ever spend writing is wasted. You might spend years working on a novel that never gets published, but it might well be a necessary stepping stone on the way to publishing something else. Something better. That has been my experience.
I bet a number of you have experienced this too. Any examples, folks? Was there ever anything you wrote that seemed to have been a total waste — but later on you realized that it was a stepping stone to something else?
Absolutely! I’ve kept whole chapters that weren’t working and during the editing process, pulled them back in in a different order.
Of course, before I learned to keep everything, I got rid of what wasn’t working and have regretted it over and over again. You think you can remember, but you can’t.
I started “writing” (playing at it) when I was very young. I was blessed with numerous creative ideas, and I was sure every idea was destined to be a novel, even to the point of starting many of them.
Naturally, that wasn’t realistic; however, I’ve found that many of those ideas, not worthy of novels themselves, have found their way as scenes in later projects, adapted to the bigger, better story.
Don’t throw away anything, but develop a workable retrieval system. Just keep writing. For me it helps to have two active projects so that when one seems to flounder, I go to the second. Often a breakthrough will come for the first project, but in the meantime I have advanced the second.
Now, about those other three dozen ideas…
I gave up on the first novel I’d written and worked on another two novels in a different genre. But then a publisher I’d submitted to 18 months earlier contacted me and offered a contract on that first book.
The one I had to totally rewrite.
I ended up salvaging only about 5,000 words from a 98,000 word MS, but those were a huge help in getting past that blinking cursor when I had to write an entire book for my first deadline.
So I’d echo the wise advice already given~ don’t throw anything away. You just might need it someday. And even if you never use those words, it’s fun to go back and see just how far you’ve come. Okay, maybe fun isn’t the correct word. My experience has been painful, and yet eye opening. It is encouraging, though, when you see real improvement.
Do any of you do anything special to organize/archive “flushed” works? Or do you just keep everything in your my documents folder?
Is there a good piece of software out there that helps you manage that stuff?
I totally agree! Never throw anything away! A short story I had published several years ago, actually started as an email to myself one night – basically venting to myself in story form. Well, I put it away in my email files only to come across it again at the “perfect” time. I reworked it a bit, and it was published. So yeah, when I feel like something needs to be written, I write it and keep it. You never know when a crappy piece of melodrama can actually be transformed into something readable.
I totally agree! Never throw anything away! A short story I had published several years ago, actually started as an email to myself one night – basically venting to myself in story form. Well, I put it away in my email files only to come across it again at the “perfect” time. I reworked it a bit, and it was published. So yeah, when I feel like something needs to be written, I write it and keep it. You never know when a crappy piece of melodrama can actually be transformed into something readable.
Story hack,
I have a file for each novel I’m working on I call ‘Bonepile’. I even label them things like ‘title bonepile version 1’ and so forth. Having this system makes it much easier to cut that lyrical bit of prose from where it doesn’t belong — you aren’t throwing it out, you are storing it. Later, if you need it, you can go find it and use it.
That is the greatest use of the system. In reality, I find that when I need to re-write that bit of prose, I can often do a better job of it the second time without resorting to the bonepile.
-MLE
I’ve found myself wishing I had kept things I’d written. When I was a kid I ‘wrote’ radio show scripts that my siblings and I would record on my sister’s tape recorder. I also had written short stories through the years. All of them seemed to have been lost during the years of moves and such. Even now I tend to just delete ideas and edits that don’t work and just keep the finished product. Never really thought to save them. Of course now I wish I had. Organizing tips on saving them would be appreciated by me.
The first draft of my first and only manuscript is complete moose poop but I learned so much in the process that it was time well spent. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to salvage any of the wreckage but the practice of writing it is such a vital step to becoming a decent writer. Everyone has to start some place.
Randy sez: I worked on my first novel for two and a half YEARS, then realized that it had a major problem that would prevent it from ever getting published. So I flushed it and started a new one.
I’d be very interested in hearing what kind of major problem would be such a roadblock, and couldn’t be fixed at all.
I wrote 2 1/2 books before I wrote something that I considered to be worth sending to a publisher. (Haven’t gone into my personal slush pile yet to revanp something yet though.)
I considered the years I spent writing them my apprenticeship. Like you say, Randy, nothing is wasted.
BTW happy anniversary! Hope you do/did something romantic.
So, am I hearing that we should have a “bonepile” file for every work that’s in process? There has got to be an easier way to retrieve flushed prose.
Yeah, I half finished my first novel, finished my first novel, but couldn’t get it published. I have kept both just in case. I think no writer can throw away his creation even if it is imperfect. Now I am working on short stories to get a grip on my writing.
I appreciate all the encouragement here, and Randy’s notes that no time spent writing is a waste. Thank you!!!!! I think you’ve all kept me from sending my pc over a cliff and taking a nose-dive along with it.
My novel/PoC (think toilet) at this point my OR may not be salvageable — residual denial, I s’pose.
And I’d really like to know what was so unsalvageable about Randy’s first 2.5 yr novel.
I called the plumber, retrieved the shreds, laid them out all over the house to dry (metaphorically, of course). Decided to do what I’ve been putting off, and resume where I left of with this crazy SNOWFLAKE METHOD I heard about. (I think it came from somewhere in Minnesota by a bored, snowbound Norwegian)
I’m taking an outline that currently lists each chapter with a single line and making each of those lines a paragraph, with the thought in mind that I could show it to a story doctor or my crit group and they could help point out where it’s going too slow, what chapters aren’t necessary, etc.
It’s already helping me see problems (just like the Snowflake Guy said it would). Wow, when you read a chapter in condensed form, you can really see when something sounds pointless, preachy or lame. You can also see if this chapter does something to progress the story along or not.
But even if I end up flushing it all away at the end, I accept it all as time well spent practicing. No one becomes a concert pianist without practice, no matter how many books they read and how many other performers they listen and talk to. And blog with.