You’ve gotta know when to hold and know when to fold…For the past several months I’ve been working on writing a YA novel. I had an idea and ran with it. Then I hit a wall. I wasn’t sure where to go with the plot and the characters I had been developing seemed flat and insincere. So after already writing several thousand words, I scrapped what I had been working on and started over. I made more notes, developed a new plot line that I thought would flow better, and rewrote where I wanted the characters to go and how I hoped they would develop. Then I started fresh.
After writing for a few more months, I hit another wall. Once again I was discontent with how my characters were developing and where my story was headed. I pushed on each time because it’s really hard to throw everything away after spending so much time and thought on what I had already written. I got to a point where I either had to say this isn’t working out and begin again or push forward and hope the issues I was having would sort themselves out. The first time I restarted it was because I was excited about what I was writing, the story and the characters. But now faced with the “do I continue?” dilemma once again, I realized that I’ve stopped looking forward to what I was writing. Writing had become tedious and more work than fun. I had ceased making time for my writing.
So I’ve decided to start over completely from scratch. New genre, new ideas, new characters. While I still have hopes to return to my YA novel, I’m moving on. You may notice that I’ve reset my word count widget to track the progress of my new book. I’m very enthusiastic about this new book and I’m hoping that this fresh start will reinvigorate my writing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go write!
