Feeling a little discouraged

[raven_estrella]

I'm on Christmas break right now, which means I won't have class for another week. I'm trying to make the best use of all the spare time. So I've started working on my novel, which I haven't had time for in a few months. I'm close to finishing it and would like to get it done before too long.

The only trouble is this: After having set it aside for

Comments

Camille says...

[anonymous]

I know exactly how you feel. I'm working on a novel, too, and I'm trying to stick a basic rule: the more you write, the better. You can always cut, reshape, patch up, rearrange and add on later. Write, write, write and get everything down before you start to obsess over whether or not it's any good. If you reread your work too much, you will hold yourself back.

[madhowan]

Oh, definitely don't throw it away! There might be some really brilliant stuff in there, and it'd be terrible to lose it!

I can't talk from much experience, because I throw stuff away a lot because it's rubbish, but I finished NaNoWriMo this year, and it's so good to have a whole novel's worth of stuff from it. It's utter trite, but I'm going to see what I can do with it when I edit it.

But you're certainly not the only one. I got pep talk after pep talk (for NaNo) from various authors, saying that their drafts were crap, and not to despair but keep working on it!

[raven_estrella]

Thanks for the encouragement! It means a lot. I'm going to try my best to finish it. Maybe I'll do NaNoWriMo this next year. I think it would be good for me just to write, write, write and not worry about whether it's any good. Even if my current novel ends up crappy, I at least have new ideas for other novels. Would you recommend doing NaNoWriMo?

[madhowan]

I hope you can find something from it, anyway! I got this email from my friend the other day that said, "I've got this great book going but it's a lot of character development and no plot. I don't know what to do with it because I like it so much, but don't want people getting bored."

And then he sent a text message about half an hour later that just said "I HAVE A PLOT! IT JUST TURNED UP AND IT'S PERFECT!" And I knew exactly how he felt--my NaNo story had nothing, and then suddenly everything just fell into place better, out of nowhere. So even if you keep your story but can't find an ending, it might turn up completely unexpectedly.

Oh, absolutely I would recommend it! I'd never even heard of it before last year, and started four days late, and never thought I'd finish, but something about knowing that 100,000 other people are struggling through a novel helps so much. The pep talks they send are excellent, and just as you need them

[laurenem6]

I think you should finish it. Even if you end up rewriting it later, or even scrapping the whole thing, it will be finished.

[raven_estrella]

I agree with you. Then I can at least say that I've written a novel, which is no mean feat.