Musical
reference. If you were ever in band
class, you already have an idea what I’m talking about.
Here’s a
quick tip I wanted to toss out for a common problem...
I think
most of us have some project—a novel, a screenplay, a short story—that we
really loved at one point, but had to put down.
Maybe it was because of work.
Family stuff could’ve cropped up.
Perhaps circumstances forced us to move on to other things. It happens.
Then we go back
to it. Not just to dabble with it over a weekend, but to pick up things where we left off. And—no surprise—it’s tough to make things
work the way they did before the break.
If you’ve
been reading this little pile of rants for a while, you may remember me
referencing a novel I started about zombies on the Moon. I began work on it back in late 2009, but put
it aside after a few months because my publisher at the time wanted me to try a mash-up novel. When I tried to go back
to the zombie idea, he’d just bought another “zombies in space” novel and warned me he
probably wouldn’t want another one (I ended up writing a book about a creepy apartment building instead). I even tried
to go back to Dead Moon again two years ago, and... well, it was a
struggle. I couldn’t remember how the characters sounded in my head, or where some of the plot points were
leading. I banged my head against it for
about three months and then, well, circumstances required I move on again.
My lovely
lady recently had a similar problem. She
tried to finish a first person manuscript that was about 4/5 done, but
she hadn’t touched it in about a decade and it was very, very voice-heavy with a
very tricky plot. That last 20% took her
months.
And I made
the same mistake again, even after my attempts to get back to the Moon. One of my most recent books began as a different novel back in 2007. It was set
aside twice (much like Dead Moon), and I’d kind of given up on it. But then I realized I could salvage a lot of
the plot and characters and use them as kind of a spin-off-side-quel
to that creepy-apartment story. Which
sounded great on a bunch of levels.
Except what
really happened was that I tried to pick up right where I left off. I fumbled with it for a long time before I
realized I needed to forget X and start writing Y. And I was 2/3 through Y before it hit me that
the whole thing was really just clinging to X again. I pulled it apart (now with a deadline
creeping close) and finally got Z put together.
Which my
editor looked at and immediately caught a bunch of Y stuff.
Y’see,
Timmy, if we’re doing things right, we all keep growing as writers. We gain experience (some good, some bad). We learn new things. We swear never to do certain things ever
again.
And because
of this, we stumble when we try to go back.
It’s kind of like bumping into an old ex and pretending nothing’s
changed when... well, a lot has changed. There’s skewed memories, things we know that we don’t want to, and experiences that make casual conversations kind of
awkward. Because we’ve grown and moved
on. There can still be something there, sure, but it’ll never be what it was back then.
Final anecdote. A month or two back I was offered a spot in a
high-profile anthology. My first thought
for a story that fit was actually an unproduced script I’d written for a
television show back in 2001. But this
was a themed anthology—my story had to fit this theme and these characters.
So I read
through the old script twice to get the story and the beats back in
my head. Then I put it aside. Didn’t
look at it again. I wrote my first draft
in a week (about 12,000 words) and had three more drafts done in the next two and a half weeks. The editor loved it.
So, here’s
my tip.
If I’m
going to go back to a half-done project that I haven’t done anything with for a
significant amount of time, I might be better off just starting from scratch.
Don’t try to save or salvage or repurpose.
Just start over. This way I’m not
fighting with present vs. past experience or voices or plotlines. I’m just writing
Sometimes
it’s faster to start over on a project than to pick it up after a long time
away from it.
Next time,
I’m going to introduce a reader request about characters.
Until then,
go write.
Man, I seriously should do this. I've been working on a thing that I keep getting stuck on. I wrote it all out, then threw away the last 50,000 words or so and started again from there. Now I'm like 15,000 more words and am stuck again.
ReplyDeleteThis one, sadly, might need to get a page-one re-write.
Hey, Casey,
ReplyDeleteDon't think of it as a rewrite. Just think of it as a new draft to get the voice right in your head again. Read through it once or thrice so you know the plot, the story, the characters, and how it all goes. Then just write it as you're thinking of it now.