Should You Stop Writing Your Manuscript?
Three times when you need to find a way to push through and finish your work…and two times when you really should just put the pen down.
I’m something of an aficionado in stubbornness. It took me ten years — and ten manuscripts — to even get an agent before a book deal. I’m a bulldog. When I set my sights on a goal, I sink my teeth in, and I do not let go.
But sometimes, I should.
Since publication, and especially since blending my background in teaching with my love of writing through my ventures at Wordsmith, I’ve learned a lot more about when it’s probably wisest to let go of a book and when you absolutely, no matter what, should hold on.
When you have never finished a manuscript before
If you’ve never fully finished a book before — especially if you have several starts and stops of unfinished pieces of a manuscript — it’s important to find a way to push through and actually finish. It may not be this manuscript, but you need to figure out why you’re spinning your wheels and not committing on any manuscript. Take a pause, read some craft books, find critique partners or a friend to talk though plot.
There is a change in dynamic once you’ve actually completed a whole manuscript. Before then, it’s all possibility, all ephemeral. It’s often not until you actually go the distance that you can see the forest for the trees.
Verdict: Write the book
When you’re really, really stuck
Say you’ve written a big chunk of a book. You know that you can write a book — you’ve done it before! — but you can’t seem to write this book. You have no idea where the characters should go. There are more plot holes than plot. Something’s just…broken.
Here’s the hard truth: sometimes, the only way out is through. Keep going. If sitting at your computer isn’t working, get up. Go for a walk. Take a break. Refill the creative well.
But don’t give up yet.
Creative blocks happen. Generally, for me at least, the solution is time — either I take the time to figure out the plot, take the time off to give my brain a break, or take time backwards by starting to delete parts of the manuscript until I can reboot the story. But the key is backtracking and deleting parts, not the whole manuscript. Go back to the seed of the idea. Give it at least one more shot before giving up on it.
Verdict: Write the book
When you’re worried you can’t do the idea justice and write it well enough
It’s a major problem that any author who actually cares about their craft faces: The book in your head is better than the book in your hands. You have grand ideas, images that aren’t translating into words. You know what you’re trying to do, but, frankly, you’re just not good enough to do it yet.
You know how you get good enough to write a good book? You write a bunch of bad books.
And then you edit them.
What I don’t recommend doing is writing “filler” — when you have an idea for a book that feels too big right now, so you write something else to get practice. Write the idea you have now. You’ll have more ideas later — bigger ideas. Trust yourself to be better in the future than you are now, both in skills and in concepts. Seize whatever idea you have now, while it’s still alive and squirming.
And yes, it’s not going to be well written.
Write it anyway.
You can edit the book to good, but only after you write it.
Verdict: Write the book
When you’ve fallen out of love (and into apathy) with the book
It happens sometimes. You start with passion and then, for whatever reason, the passion dies.
Now, there’s a difference here between losing heart and falling out of love. There are times when writing is just hard, and you kind of hate it because of that, and you’d really just like a nap and a cookie and a job that doesn’t feel so personal. When that’s the case, take a break, then get back to work.
But if you open your manuscript, look at the words, and feel nothing but apathy?
Stop.
It’s actually better for you to hate your book than it is to feel apathetic. Feel something for your own work. If you hate it, you can flip that coin around back to passion with the right work. But if you feel nothing at all?
That’s the death of art.
Verdict: Stop writing that book.
When you realize you’re telling the wrong story
There are times when you have a great idea — but it’s not your story to tell. Maybe it’s based on an experience you have never lived, maybe it’s based on a perspective that you can’t truly wrap your head around, maybe you realize fundamentally that you’re telling Character A’s story, but you really ought to be telling Character B’s story. Maybe you’ve realized that you’ve accidentally written a plot that can be interpreted in a way you didn’t mean.
I pitched an idea once about nanobots in the future, and a corrupt government using them to control people under the pretense of healthcare. I thought it was a clever twist…and then fortunately someone pointed out that it could be interpreted as anti-vaccination propaganda, but I am vociferously, staunchly in support of vaccinations and modern medicine. The entire idea had to be scrapped. I went into it thinking only about nanobots and a far-future society on a space station, but once I applied that idea to current events, I knew there was no way I could put that story into the world. It was not at all something I wanted to say, and not at all something I wanted my voice used for.
Fifty years ago, my idea would have worked. Maybe fifty years from now, it would work again (here’s hoping!). But right now, given the current society and the antivax movement, there’s no way I’ll write something that even hints at the possibility of being in support of them.
I stopped that book, even though I’d already written more than a hundred pages and plotted out the entire thing. There was no saving it. It was not what I wanted to say.
I’ve had similar cases in other stories. It absolutely happens. Fortunately, there are times when you realize soon enough that you’ve gone down a path so dissimilar to your vision that you can salvage some elements. But there are also times when you should just stop, and try again with something new, and that’s okay. That’s a part of writing.
Verdict: Stop writing the book.
At the end of the day, it comes down to you and where you want to spend your time. Just make sure you’re giving yourself and your story the chance it deserves before you give up on it!
