So, you've spent ten years, 6 months, 2 days... whatever, on producing your masterpiece.

Your baby.

You've ignored the rest of your family, forgotten the garden and the diy, totally lost enthusiasm in your 'real' work. You've got up early to nurture it, you've stayed up late to help it get to sleep. In short, you've had your head full of plot ideas when you should have been thinking about other things - the things that those 'normal' people think about.

You know. I'm sure you've been there.

And then one day you read back some of the early chapters and you think, 'This is awful. How could I have written that ?'

You see it for what it really is.

What's worse, your head has started filling with other ideas; new plots, new babies. Babies that will be perfect.

You don't want to do all that re-writing, do you ? You want to get on and write new stuff.

You're at the crossroads. Do you move on, or do you re-write ? Do you start doing those 'normal' things again ?

What do you do ? What do you do ?

Noddy,

Not sure I'm qualifed to give advice, but here goes anyway.

I know exactly what you mean. Firstly, remember the positives. You've got better. At least you know the earlier sections you wrote aren't as good as the later ones.

Secondly, don't be totally sure your right about it being awful. I've given early chapters to people, and the parts they've liked best have often been the bits I hated.

Finally, my advice would be finish. Then go back, and rewrite if you feel you need to. Otherwise you run the risk of flitting from one project to another without finishing anything.

Good luck

Ben

Thanks noddy - that's the kind of question that makes me feel I'm not alone!

I think it depends an awful lot on what kind of thing you are doing and the kind of person you are. Generally though, I think most projects have a time when you feel part of them and fully involved; and a time when their 'moment has passed'. If you still feel strongly about the work you have just 'finished', then by all means go back and sort out the earlier stuff.

On the other hand, as Newmark says, you may have developed considerably over the period of writing, and it may be best to move on to the next project.

I enjoyed the description of the writers agony though - I think if everything was flowing confidently and without a hint of difficulty, that would be a sure sign you were writing badly!

Noddy

perhaps it is slightly different when you write poetry but not much. Writing is surely like anything you do you learn and grow the more you do it.

A carpenter who makes a piece of furniture say a coffee table and keeps it as his first piece will look at it years later and think I could have made that so much better if I had made it now, but still look at it with fondness and pride.

Writing is no different except you have the chance to mould it and change it constantly but equally you will have learnt from your experience and developed so in its way it is still the masterpiece you started out writing, your coffee table, it is just that now it has become your development piece.

Keep it read it with fondness but dont change it keep it as the carpenter keeps his table.

Go with your new ideas they may well be a development of the original but your writng will be stronger, better more lucid for the experience.

I have poetry that I wrote 7 years ago and when I read it I think my god did I write that why did I do that or use that word, but the emotion for writing it has past and to change it now would be to spoil the emotion which it contains so I leave it be as testimony to earlier years and move on.

take care

david

Bah, I'm made to feel like such an anomaly smoetimes. As someone who has never had to write to a deadline, I can't really empathise here. But I will say that I never let my writing interfere with any other facet of my existence.

There's a time to move on to the next piece of writing, though; having learned from that cold moment of horror that Noddy sums up so well, apply some of those skills and start something new. I agree that flitting from one piece of unfinished work to the next may just leave you feeling unsatisfied, but try to always finish, even if it's not perfect. Because there's nothing to stop you revisiting that earlier work when you've got some distance from it.

Have a look at what some of our interviewees say about this very subject. A lot of them do advocate, as I would, that you need to get back into your life inbetween projects, to give you some perspective, some time to think while you're gardening, painting walls, arguing with your kids etc.... and new material, ideas, new takes on old work may well occur precisely because you're not worrying at them.

Personally, as someone with the deadlines that Insane B mentions, if a project I've written out of love and not on commission isn't feeling right, I do move on to something else, while regretting the loss of that loved piece, and then come back to it months later. It always works for me, because each stage/each new piece of writing teaches me something more that I can then use on that old work.

I laughed when I read what you said because it is EXACTLY what I was just thinking this morning about a piece I have been writing for ages (years in fact). I was wondering whether to drop it because it needed so much work done on it but that thought only lasted a second, I mean I’ve spent years on the damn thing, I’m not gonna just drop it because I cant be bothered to rewrite it. I am happy with the story but the early sections are weak compared to the latter and it all needs rewriting and grammar improvement.

The thing is I still love it and I would regret leaving it just due to laziness, I have done other work since I started my first story but I still go back to it time and time again.

Hi Scott,
Sounds similar to me. The work I was talking about was a novel that I've been working on in stints now for several years, although the story has been with me since I was a child. I can't drop it either, but I just wish that I could either clone myself or find some more time. Starting a novel is dead easy - I think most people have had a go at that - but completing 400+ pages of good quality, readable and entertaining work is, well, psychologically challenging... particularly when you know that the chances of getting it published or even with an agent are slim to negligible. Still, I guess that's part of the fascination with the whole thing. It's the challenge that probably drives us all on.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings...

Regards
Noddy

Again your right, I can’t leave it, it’s apart of me and I understand how it can affect your personal life, it is always there in your head. You may do the slightest thing then it gives you an idea, you have to write it down before you forget owt and before you know it your running down the street leaving your missus in the lurch to by a pen and paper.

I have spent the last hour and half rewriting the beginning just chapter One of the work I was speaking of but I have a hell of a long way before I’m even a third the way through the 138 pages and 78,778 words of my first novel, there’s a lot of cutting, adding and reworking to be done so wish me luck. Sometimes it not doing it that’s hard, once you start your away, its just the daunting task ahead they dims my will.

I have just put on what I have rewritten, it’s called Harmonies Journey (I’ve even changed the name, it was originally called The Land)

Scott

Hi Scott,
I'll have a read and post some comments either tonight or tomorrow (a curry awaits me now !)
Regards
Nod

Oh you have SOOO summed up my life!

Multi-tasking gone crazy.

At the moment I'm working on two poems that need redrafting, I'm a third of the way through a play, a quarter of the way through a children's story I started at Easter and barely drafting a sitcom I started about a year and a half ago. And I am still churnig out new poems and finishing them while all the rest is up in the air.

The trouble is that I have new great ideas to write about that don't fit into the genre or the world I've created in another half-wriiten project, so as not to lose the moment of inspiration I start putting it down on paper.

Not only that, I'm also guilty of ignoring everything else in my life while I have these moments - I'll work solidly of a piece of writing for two weeks then not feel the motivation to go back to it for months because a new idea has come along.

And I agree with Anna (was it Anna's comment?) that said you have to get on with life because that's where ideas and creativity come from. But, guilty as charged, I don't. I need to learn a little discipline in that area.

And I frequently go back to something I've written and hate it - because that flash of inspiration has passed. That's a reason I've found WriteWords so helpful, because I can upload a piece of work and other people (who don't know me - that helps!) can crit it. That often kicks the motivation back in.

As David said, maybe poetry's a little different. Perhaps simply because it's often shorter. Like I said, in between all these projects, I'll write a good first draft of a poem in an hour and it could be redrafted several times and completed in a week because it's usually capturing that one moment for me.

Interesting subject you've started here - very self-analysing.

Cheers.

Lisa

Now come on Noddy - I can tell your a father rather than a mother. Well your profile also gives it away a bit. Now, as a mother, I would say, look at what you've produced. Okay, it may not only remind you of your Mother-in Law but also keep you awake at night, distract you when you're driving or trying to sleep, make you cringe at times, cause you to get up at 3 a.m. to attend to it, but are you going to drive it out of your life to fend for itself and ultimately die, after all you have invested in it? No! however much of a loser, time-waster, or downright embarrassment it is now, you will continue to love it, feed it, nurture it and knock it into shape. One day it may become famous, with you elevated as its creator and you will be scorched by your own reflection in it. Let's face it, in your dotage, you may depend on it to keep you in the style to which you are accustomed. S-Jane.

Right. I can see what you're all saying. And Noddy, I'm exactly at the same position as you are right now! Ive written about 80% of a novel (which i've started working on 4 years ago), then left it and started on a new one which looks much better than the other in all aspects. But now I'm struggling to decide wether to drop the first one and focus on the ther, or finish it before.
I have to tell you, it's kinda hard to come up with a decision like that, not after spending so much time and effort on a project that has become a very essential part in your life and in making you what you are today!
Anyone see what I mean?
(Sorry, not much help was !?)

ali /Noddy

you must let the story decide which one you finish first.

scan read them or the last few chapters and then you will know, the story and the characters will help you through and those who are ready for their finale will let you know, if notthey will stay quiet

believe me try it

good luck enjoy the ride

david

I'm trying to write a novel. Feel like I'm running a never ending marathon, or slipping down a dark tunnel where there is only a tiny speck of light at the end and publishing resembles the pot of gold at the end of the urban rainbow. Do other people find that it's difficult to divide time between editing and writing? Any tips on how not to get pulled into the editing salon, with its seductive plush seats and free drinks bar? Find I'm getting drunk in there and not cracking on with the mega marathon that needs to be completed. And what about plot? Do writers out there have a fixed one and then mould it around their characters? Mine is diverging, splitting into amoeba and amalgamating into new pathways - so much so, I think I'm writing several novels at once! Any tips on plot?? Any thoughts on the viability of a novel with no plot???
I hope that I make sense to someone out there....