I made a hard decision on Friday.
I decided to abandon my current novel-in-progress.
Currently at 61,000 words in length, this novel represents a large amount of my time and effort. It is about 75% completed.
It is also not working. And I don’t mean that in a rough-drafts-suck kind of way, but in a there-are-several-deep-systemic-problems-here-and-most-of-this-needs-to-be-thrown-out kind of way. So I am putting it aside. Maybe at some point I’ll know how to fix these deep systemic problems and I’ll return to the project. Or maybe I won’t. It’s hard to say.
Photo Credit: seyed mostafa zamani via Compfight cc
Scott Adams had a good point in his widely shared article about failure: that there are people who focus on goals and people who focus on systems, and it is the people who focus on systems who tend to do better.
Don’t get me wrong; I think having goals is important. I’m a planner, and goals help structure planning. But ultimately, we want to have goals that support our system. When the goal no longer supports the system, it is time to change the goal.
My system is to be continuously improving myself as a writer while looking for opportunities to advance my career. My goal was to complete this novel. When I started the novel, the goal was in line with the system, but that is no longer the case. Being aware of the broken aspects of the novel, at this point I’ve been going through the motions, which isn’t teaching me all that much. (If I didn’t know how to finish projects, or if I felt I could learn a lot about endings by finishing, this might not be the case. But neither of those applies this time.) And finishing a novel this broken won’t do anything for my career except take time I could be using elsewhere.
That’s not to say I haven’t learned a lot from this project because oh wow, have I ever. I’ll take all of that knowledge and experience with me to the next project, where I’ll put it to good use. But sometimes it’s important to be able to figure out when to cut your losses and walk away. My own personal tendency is to hang on too long. This is another opportunity to practice not doing that.
If you’re wondering how I’m feeling, well, I just put 61,000 words into a drawer, which is not the most pleasant experience ever. But at the same time, I do feel good about this decision. I am excited to have more time to work on other projects that I believe in. I’m happy to be moving forward.
Failure is hard, but it’s also necessary when we’re trying to push our limits and become better. So this is not a horribly discouraging thing. I’d feel a lot worse if I no longer believed in my system, but I do. Nothing fundamental has changed. I’m just moving on to the next stepping stone.
What is your system? Are your goals in line with it? How do you feel about failure?
The Practical Free Spirit 
This is a beautiful post, Amy. I definitely understand how you feel; I shelved a novel project this summer myself. It’s tough, but I also took some valuable insights away from the experience. Hugs!
Thanks, Danielle. I’m definitely in a better frame of mind post-decision. Hopefully higher productivity awaits! 🙂
I’m sorry, Amy, but I’m not seeing where you’ve failed here. you successfully recognized that this project isn’t working: you made (what I hope is) the right decision about shelving it. You learned, as you say, ‘a lot from this project’, and you’ve got other stuff to work on where you will apply what you learned.
And that book’s still there, waiting for you to come back to it at some point, if that’s what needs to happen.
Sounds like success to me!
I love the way you frame things, Anthony! 🙂
No words we write are ever wasted. I had a very similar thing happen with the novel I recently completed. I put it down for about three years and wrote something else, then came back to it with the realization that I’d picked the wrong protagonist, and suddenly found a backbone that supported it all the way through to the end. You never know what might happen with that novel later. Either way, you will have learned things about writing from the effort you put in, and those things will help you going forward. Everything serves the larger goal of becoming a better writer. 🙂 I’ll be cheering for you!
It’s true, I’m definitely not throwing anything away. Who knows when it might come in handy? Thanks, Juliette.
Better to evaluate and focus than continue. Most discarded projects in history have led to amazing developments.
I hope this gives you momentum!!
-L
Thanks, Lexi! I’m hoping so too. 🙂
You’ll get there, Amy! My god, I just finished a 250k novel before I wrote the last humor piece, and it was like pulling teeth the whole way. But I finished it anyway. And when I got done with it, I couldn’t even read through it to edit it, it was so bad. It was intensely frustrating. BUT, the frustration from that piece made me say “I’m going to write something that is not deep or complicated in the slightest.” So I wrote a zany humor piece and it was loads of fun and I like it.
Thank you for being an inspiration, Joe. Wasn’t that zany humor piece what just landed you an agent? 😉 Congrats again.
Your description of letting go of the novel that was holding you back comes at a time when I am making a choice of whether to let go of a dissertation that is no longer the one I meant to write and standing in the way of me beginning a distinct career, one that I would not have gotten wind of had I not been working on the dissertation, but one that I cannot imagine giving up, even though I could finish the doctorate and go on in that direction. I appreciate your description and thank you for sharing your experience with the rest of us. Best wishes on the projects that now can have a greater share of your attention, and know that your words are reaching the world… At least through my email forwards.
[…] Failure is a part of life. Sometimes it feels like it is a larger part of life than you would like. That is the time to […]
[…] Failure is the New Black […]
[…] been feeling a bit bummed out ever since my last novel fell apart, operating under a cloud of discouragement. I didn’t let this feeling stop me from planning my […]
[…] of you will remember that after many tribulations, I decided to leave last year’s novel unfinished, at least in the short term. So a question that I’ve been necessarily invested in is this: What […]