When People Hate The First Draft Of Your Novel

Since February, I have been hard at work on a novel called The Battle of the Old Free State that fictionalizes the events around the single biggest event of my life to date — the brief, tragic life of ROKon Magazine in Seoul, South Korea.

My involvement in ROKon Magazine ended about six years ago, but I think about it every day. It really was that dramatic a story. I don’t really want to write a roman a clef, however. I want it to be a “real” novel that is only loosely “inspired” by the events of the magazine all those many years ago.

I have been a reporter for close to 20 years now and switching gears and writing a novel has been significantly more difficult than I expected. But I wrote a first draft — a short one at only about 61,000 words — and almost gleefully started to shoot it out to people I knew who I thought might be interested.

I thought I had a shot that it might actually be pretty good at least in someone’s opinion.

Nope.

Nearly everyone I gave it to hated it or gave me the worst response of all — none.

So now I don’t know what to do. I thought about just giving up, but I believe in this story too much and so I am going to regroup. But it hurts. Here I was, thinking I was going to write the Great American Expat novel and now I am going to have to start from scratch.

I don’t quite know when I am going to get back to writing the novel, but I will. The story is too good not to be told. It is just a matter of my writing ability maturing to the point that I am able to convey properly the story the way it needs to be told.

And this doesn't even begin to address how difficult it will be to get the novel published, even if I am able to make it good enough to be considered by a publisher.

But to be an aspiring novelist you have to be a bit delusional. I am going to keep going, no matter what.

Wish me luck.