Breaking Up with My Novel

The awesome Comic is from www.inkygirl.com

My friend has a blog where she posts short fiction stories (Diva Fiction Bytes). She had one particular story that she could not finish; however, a couple of readers were waiting for an ending. She explained to them that she’d broken up with the story, “I broke up with the story. OK. There, I’ve said it.” I was tickled, but I knew how she felt. I too have started stories but didn’t finish because I broke up with my story…I went one way and the story went its way. We were not compatible or the story felt that I didn’t give it enough attention. Things just went sour between me and those stories, and we went our separate ways.

 My friend and I discussed it and surmised that We are both word writers (as opposed to paragraph writers as I learned from Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.) by Francine Prose). We tend to agonize and spend colossal amounts of time and energy determining the ’perfect’ word and putting it in the very best place in the sentence, so we often use up our passion and energy for the story on syntax.

We brainstormed and came up with a tidy solution. When we write our first drafts, we must remember that it is the FIRST DRAFT. In the second draft we can perfect our word choice and placement. No back tracking, stopping, or ruminating over the best way to say this or the more effective way to say that during first draft creation. We simply get the story out.

Have you broken up with any of your stories? Divorced or split from a novel that you started? What were your reasons? Do you have a fix?

Happy Writing,
Trina

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