Posts Tagged ‘revision’
After-NaNo Blues
Once again, I’ve dropped the ball on posting regularly… but it’s December, so I can blame it on the holidays, right?
Not so much. Rather, I’ve had a few weeks of recovery from NaNoWriMo, which I attribute to my Muse packing her bags and heading out for some place tropical. I wish she’d taken me with her.
This happens every year after NaNo, though this year was worse than most — probably because of how invested in it I was as an ML — and it didn’t help that I hated my novel. I mean hated, with vehemence. Nothing went as planned, the characters were flat and dull, and my Voice sounded like something out of a grade 2 reader from 1932. Seriously. So, it’s no wonder that I didn’t finish the novel within the month as planned, though I did make the 50k. But oh, it hurt.
The novel broke my heart, and sooner or later, I’m going to have to fix it. We’re talking serious re-writing, tearing the story limb from limb, and putting the pieces back together after they’ve been completely and utterly recreated.
I may need to start from scratch. But I believe in my idea, and so I can’t simply throw the manuscript out the window and be done with it. Though… some days I wish I could!
How about you? Have you ever had a novel break your heart? Or started to write something you’d been so incredibly excited about, only to find that it turned into nothing but a pile of meaningless dreck that you’d have to entirely destroy in order to build it back to the way you’d planned?