How to Tell if You Should You Give Up On Your Novel and Write Something New

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Not all novels need to be written. Is yours one of them?

Right after my third novel was published (2011), I hit a bad patch of writing. My muse went on vacation, every sentence I typed was a battle, and writing became a chore I dreaded. Although it felt like giving up, I shifted my writing focus to nonfiction until telling stories became fun again. Eventually it did, but it took years.

I wrote a lot of so-so novels during that time. Every single one was based on an idea I loved, but they needed a lot of revising and overhauling to make them work, and I wasn’t sure if revising them yet again was a good idea or not.

Idea #1 frustrated me for two and a half years of revisions. Idea #2 took another two years of my life that went nowhere. Idea #3 was a NaNo project that actually made writing fun again, but then languished when I wasn't sure what to do with it next. It was outside my regular genre and market, and trying to sell that one felt like I was starting over again as a writer.

I Quit: When to Give Up on a Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

When it is time to call it quits with your manuscript?

Unless you're one of the rare lucky ones to sell the first book you ever wrote, you'll have that moment when you wonder if it's time to shove your baby in the trunk. I've had those thoughts twice with just one manuscript, and I re-wrote and re-submitted my first novel. The first time I decided it wasn't time to give up and slaved away another year. The second time, I knew it was over.

How?

Well, 50 rejections made it pretty clear that the novel had problems, but what really convinced me was the nagging feeling I'd had that the book wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. Good wasn't going to cut it and get me published. It was hard to admit that I had a decently written novel with an overdone plot. But I knew. Oh, I knew.

5 Reasons to Give Up on Your Novel (And One Reason Not to)

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

When it is time to call it quits with your manuscript?

 

Not every novel is going to work, no matter how much we might love the idea. Some ideas don't have enough conflict to maintain 400+ pages of story, others sound great until we get in there and start writing them, and some just need more skill or focus than we're able to give them at that time.

At some point in your writing life, you'll have a moment when you wonder if it's time to move on from a great idea to something else. You’ll doubt the novel is any good, and writing it probably isn’t any fun anymore. You might even be stuck, struggling with every word and unsure what to do with the mess you’ve created.

I’ve written seriously for twenty-five years, and I've had three manuscripts that made me want to throw in the towel—one I went back to and finished, one I'm still considering how I can make it work, and one I know I’m never going back to.