Abandon your novel?

Finding momentum in meandering

I wonder if abandoning a work should be thought of as part of the creative process? We need to abandon some things, right? And by releasing, we invite something else in to fill the space. Because one definition of being human is that we fill the space.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to finish a novel because I just taught a class on novel writing, and one class dealt with getting through the muddy middle and all of the grit and determination you need to finish a novel. 

But then a new idea struck me.

I was researching an upcoming Write-minded interview with Paolo Bacigalupi, and I came across the most interesting quote from him.

He said, “Well, when you keep trying to write things and you keep failing to actually finish them, it's like sticking your finger in a light socket. It is sort of painful and damaging, you think ‘maybe I should do something different.’”

It turns out he not only quit writing the novel he was working on, he quit writing all together—after writing best-selling and award-winning novels. He was burned out. He was tired of thinking of dystopian issues, both on the page and in real life. He wasn’t feeling it. To say the least.

Find out how Paolo returned to the page below …

I often get the question, “How do I know when my novel is done?” But I don’t often get the question, “How do I know if I should quit writing my novel?” And as much as I want to guide people to finish their work, to form a depth of belief in themselves and their novel that powers their grit and determination, sometimes we have to know when it’s time to move on and leave a story behind.

One of the reading assignments I have my students do is to read John Green’s NaNoWriMo pep talk on abandoned stories. In it, he says,

“Way down deep in the dark archives of my hard drive, I have a folder called Follies, which contains an impressive collection of abandoned stories: There’s the zombie apocalypse novel about corn genetics, the sequel, the one about the Kuwaiti American bowling prodigy, the desert island novel, and many more. These stories have only one thing in common: They’re all about 25,000 words.”

He says he’s abandoned these novels for two reasons: he reaches the middle, the hard part, and their initial gusto has waned, so he just doesn’t have the oomph to keep going. And then he says abandoned novels are more promising than completed ones—they still have potential, in other words.

I also have a folder full of half-finished novels. I don’t even know when or why I abandoned them—or if I’ll return to them—but I put enough work into them that they beg revisiting, and they beg an evaluation of whether they are worth finishing.

But here’s my thing. I believe that the biggest part of finishing a book is your belief in whether your story matters—to you, to the world, to anybody. That halfway mark, the muddy middle, is so damning, it’s where so many novels go to die, so you have to have the resolve of belief to keep going.

How will we replenish ourselves so that our curiosity guides us, pulls us, tickles us, talks with us, sleeps with us?

That’s why I’ve always liked NaNoWriMo’s mantra of “Your story matters,” because you have to believe your story matters to start it. You have to believe it matters to get through the muddy middle and finish it. And then you have to believe in it to publish and promote it. And I guess I must have stopped believing in my abandoned novels. So that’s the criteria for whether to finish a novel.

I know this isn’t the greatest guidance for writers who ask whether they should abandon their novels because it’s a little squishy, but I think your writing asks a question: Does it matter enough to you to be uncomfortable with it? Does it matter enough to muster up the grit necessary to keep going?

Beyond any matters of grit, though, I keep thinking about how we need to constantly be attuned to our momentum (or our lack of momentum) and think about how we’re going to replenish ourselves so that our curiosity guides us, pulls us, tickles us, talks with us, sleeps with us.

If you’re going to work on a book for one, two, three or more years, you’re going to hit many muddy middles of exhaustion like John Green mentioned, so it’s important to think about how to replenish—to feel the calling.

Paolo’s return to writing novels

After a long period of time away from writing, Paolo decided to write almost like he was doodling. He set a goal of writing 500 words a day, and he’d write anything that came to mind, with no goal to do anything with it, just to have fun.

You might call this an exercise in replenishing momentum. He began to look forward to his writing sessions. He began writing more than 500 words each day. He began to write about a story world and the characters that would become his new novel, Navola.

In fact, he wrote 200,000 words of that novel. He was a writer again. Without sticking his finger in the light socket. He was a writer with joy, which is an important source of momentum. He said:

“I think that a healthy writer finds pleasure in their work. I think there are unhealthy ways to go about doing good work, as well. The outcome can be good, but the damage internally is bad for the writer.”

I’m at a crossroads as a writer, drifting in an interlude. Instead of forcing my next project, I’m going to practice Paolo’s creative play, to gather momentum, to feel the forces of curiosity. I love the way he thinks of himself as a writer—as a “meanderer” or a “fiddler.”

Other guests on Write-minded have talked in a similar way about their process. Lan Samantha Chang and Rachel Khong come to mind. They randomly accumulated their novels by … meandering.

Let us meander. Let us play.

Listen to Paolo Bacigalupi on Write-minded!

Because I’m available for book coaching and editing!

I’ve written extensively about creativity in numerous books and articles, talked with 300 writers on my podcast, Write-minded, led the largest writing event in the world, National Novel Writing Month, and …. well, I’ve just immersed myself in all things writing for a lifetime.

I bring this wisdom and more to my one-on-one work with writers.

Because a quote

“The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.”

—Walt Whitman