How do you know when enough is enough…
Recently I have come to a startling conclusion. It’s something I am actually rather ashamed to admit … my conclusion is even more shaming.
In short, I suck at writing.
Well, okay, I sucked at writing two years ago and that suckage continued until I’d say last spring where I began having moments of decent to great writing. But now looking at the books I would like to get published, I feel deflated and back at a level of naïve suckage.
What do you do when you’ve spent three years working so hard to perfect your craft… when you’ve spent three years perfecting your stories, editing, getting them ready for publication… and then go back to begin finalizing them for agents and editors and realize… ALL but two (soon to be three) need major rewrites?
I’m literally in pain thinking of the massive amount of work I would have to do to bring these books up to snuff and to my current writing abilities.
One book in particular is sending me into fits of anxiety. The book, called the Protectors, was one of my first attempts at a full-length novel. I worked diligently on this with a mentor in 2008 and I have received so much great feedback from beta readers that I think I could hit it big with this book.
Then comes my first competition… total flop. I think I scored second to last with one reader giving me a great score of 88 with tons of praise and the others giving me the lowest possible scores. One lady didn’t even finish, she just blasted me about my lack of commas.
So I revised and sent it to some more readers. More great feedback.
Now I’m finalizing it for submission to a publisher and taking a final read through. OMG. I’ve grown so much since then. I would never write the ending as I did. There’s just so much more I would do with it now.
But I’m done with the book. I just cannot be motivated to do anymore rewrites unless someone imposed a deadline and said – We’ll publish if you fix this. I really just can’t get the energy up for it.
That leaves me with a choice— do I go ahead and submit something that I’m dissatisfied with but that I really feel readers will love…. Or do I throw in the towel and keep the book in the bottom drawer and just move on???
It’s so hard to think that I have three books, completed, submission ready… all I have to do is hit the send button until I’m rejected out of the market or I get accepted… and I’m holding back because I’m caught — do I just go for publication or do I only try with my best work??????
UGH…. This is painful. More painful than the rejection I received last week saying my heroine’s humor was uneven and my story couldn’t decide if it was romance or erotica (I’m still not sure how I can fix either of those issues).
Oh, I think I’m getting a migraine.
Anyone else have this problem?
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
–Voltaire
http://www.famous-quotes.net/Quote.aspx?The_perfect_is_the_enemy_of_the_good
Submit them. People like the books, so people will buy them. Later, critics will look over your body of work, and find them lacking compared to your later pieces, and talk about how you grew as a writer along the way, how you were always learning, but at the same time your early work is still somehow quintessentially yours.
I look back on my first year of podcasts and cringe. I can do so much better now… but they’re still up there, and I still get feedback telling me how great they are, how they wish I would put up a Hinata sequel or get back to the Dreamland series.
Nobilis,
Wow… great insight!!! Your post really made my day… Anyone else experience this–where people still ask for your old stuff — stuff that you may cringe at today???
April
Submit them. You put your heart into them. Submit them. The worst you can get is a rejection. I figure, prepare yourself for the worst, hope for the best.
Good luck!
As writers, we are our own hardest critics. I’ll look back on a published work that had been well-received and find places I would have changed. Bottom line, you will never know the outcome of your career unless you take a few leaps.
Thank you Rebecca and Kat!!! I’m thinking I’m going to just suck it up and push the send button. See what happens. Maybe someday I’ll even get accepted by Angela James — I would love to work with her!
Just keep plugging away… anyone ever regret submitting something not good enough? Ever feel you’ve ruined your chances with a publishing house or something?
April
Well I might have a different opinion than the ones already stated. I think that every thing we write is an experience and a chance to learn. If you completed your first full lenght,
congrats! If you completed your first erotica, congrats! if you tried first pov and hated it, congrats for learning that 3 pov is your voice.
As long as you learned something from each thing you do it is not a waste of time. You have grown BECAUSE you wrote them. Everyone needs a starting point, a place to grow from. But the hard truth is that sometimes that is all you will get out of those stories. The experience. It really is okay if they never see the light of day as long as you have bettered your craft and strenghtened your skills. Shelf it and try again.
Now, if you were saying ‘I love this story! Nothing needs fixing! It’s perfect!” I would say sub this any and everywhere until you exhaust the market or get a yes. But you don’t think this is your best work, you feel that you have major rewrites, so to me that means its not ready to go out unless you are willing to try to make it something you are proud of.
Yes, we are our own killers of confidence, so you have to take that into consideration when you decide what to do.
I have a story, my first full lenght sweet adult story I wrote 3 years ago. I look back on it and as much as I LOVE the story and the characters, I can’t fix it. I have learned too much to try. Unless I just pull the plot out and completely start over (which one day I might) I have to put it aside and move forward with other stories. It is hard. Very hard. I was so proud of myself and I learned a lot from that story that it hurts not to see it out there in the world, but I know, and I mean I really KNOW it is not going anywhere. It served its purpose, and has helped me be a better writer for my new stuff.
You can either look at writing as a hobby and a passion, something that you were born to do and no matter the outcome always write storied, even if they never get published. Or they might get published but it may never amount to quiting your day job and that okay with you becasue that is what you want out of it. This is completely acceptable. But if you want writing to be treated as a career, than you have to make professional (and hard) decisions. Sometimes this will mean knowing when to say enough is enough with one story, taking from it what you can (experience, voice improvement, character and plot development etc) and move FORWARD.
Here is something to consider, or at least how I sometimes look at things when I start feeling exactly how you are (because April, hon, I have SOOOOOOOOOOO been there too). If I wanted to switch careers…any career….I would need either training or more education. Which means going back to school. You can’t just change from being one thing to the other. I am a real estate agent and I have recently decided to become a mortgage professional. Same type of industry but I had to go to school to get my mortgage license. I have to have a mentor for my first 15 deals. I need guidance to help learn. Does that make sense? Maybe I am rambling.
I have read your work, April and I feel I have always been honest with my feedback, so believe me when i say i think you can be a career writer. It is up to you to make the correct and best moves for you.
I wish you all the luck and I hope that I haven’t offended anyone with my opinions. Please feel free to comment as I’d love others insight.
*hugs*
Kendal
You will *always* write better next year than you do this year. You will *always* find things you can change, wish you’d spotted, etc etc in older works as you grow as a writer. And you never stop growing as a writer. Never.
So if you are waiting for the perfect, best you will ever write manuscript to submit, you will wait forever. My suggestion? Stop waiting so long between when you finish and when you submit. No, I don’t think you ought to submit work you’re not happy with. That’s why you need to submit them while you still are.
Put those aside, imo. Write something new. Do not spend years ‘perfecting’ them. They will never be perfect. Self edit, get crits, have a reader or two look them over and then send them out into the scary world. At some point you have to let go and clearly with the ones you have you’ve waited too long to let them go because now they’re not something you’re proud of. Best work changes month by month, year by year and book by book. Send out the best work you can write now, and stop waiting for them to be perfect. They never will be.
Writers write, but authors sell. You can’t sell if you don’t submit.
Good luck! And of course, this is just my opinion, take it as you will, it’s what works for me.
I agree with Kendal and Fae. If I’m unhappy with a work, I won’t submit it until I am. It has something to do with my confidence as an author. If I’m not happy with it, why should I expect an editor to be. In other words, why should you put your name on something you’re unhappy with just for the sake of submitting? You shouldn’t. Always send in the best sub you can at the time. (*Note I said, at the time*- this little caveat allows for growth as a writer.)
Now, that’s not to say you have to work your fingers to the bone and brain to mush just to be happy with a work. It doesn’t mean that at all. There is nothing wrong with putting something in a drawer for a year or two or ten and then taking it out again to rewrite when you have a better handle on the characters or craft. Sometimes it’s just the project in particular you need to germinate.
Case in point. The very first book I ever wrote and finished was an abomination. Not kidding. It was simply the most horrible book ever written and on every possible level. It was stuck in a drawer while I learned and grew and went on to write other things. Then I had a pitch session with Tor books at the NJRW conference (I think in 2004). Well, I’m thinking Tor, fantasy/sci-fi heavy hitters, I’ll sub the first book of my epic fantasy series I’d been working on for years. Well, when I got the paper at the conference about what they were looking for it said paranormal romances. What?! I had nothing that was paranormal romance! – Well, except for this book I’d stuck in a drawer years ago. (It had been stuck in the drawer so long technologies had come and gone since I’d written it.) – I pitched the book off the cuff and the editor asked for a full. Oh, Jeez. So, I told her, I had to do some work on it yet. She said, fine send it when you’re happy with it, and not until because I’d end up wasting both our time. I could respect that. –
So, when I got home I sat down at my computer and started over. Page One, Word One. And wrote the entire book over again from scratch and looking at no notes. The story came pouring out and in such tight prose and clean language it was as if I had chanelled it from another source. (I did, really. It was my former self filtering it through the writing experiences I’d had and things I’d learned since I’d written the first draft so long ago. It took me about three months to rewrite 100K novel. Now, that’s moving and grooving and I do work a full time job besides.)
Tor ended up passing on it, but I turned around and sold it to Samhain after changing a few scenes based on remarks the Tor editor made- minor changes really – and that book is By A Silken Thread. I’ve gotten extremely good reviews on it both for it’s originality and surprise ending.
My advice. There are two things in writing you should never be afraid of. 1) to kill your darlings. – letting go of ideas you might love, but doesn’t really fit the story. 2) putting your work in a drawer and saving it for later while you work on something else.
Nothing ever goes to waste. There might be a time you can pull a story from a drawer and pitch it like I did and have success with it. Or it might never see the light of day. Or you might send it in now and hit one out of the ballpark. Who’s to say? But it’s always good to start witha product you’re proud of.
Hope some of this account helps you.
Good luck on whatever you decide.
Kendal…. You hit the nail on the head. I want to be a career writer and I want to put stuff out there that people will love and that I can be proud of. One book does not a career make. But one badly written book could kill off potential fans.
Slow and steady wins the race as Kate Pearce is reminding me over and over….
Fae,
You have hit the nail on the head. I should have tried to get this published in 2008 when I first got it ready for submission but just wanted to do one more thing with the ending and never got to it. I’m definitely not keeping things anymore. When they’re ready for submission, I’m sending. I have to start somewhere!!!!
Kat,
You bring up a good point. While I may not be happy with this one now, maybe one day I’ll be motivated to do a complete rewrite and this little story will be sitting there waiting for me, the characters fuller and more detailed than ever before. Excellent point.
April
I’ve totally been where you are April. Here’s my two cents. Don’t submit anything you feel is subpar, because what if it gets picked up?
If you had just finished that first book and were feeling this way, I’d recommend differently.
But you know you’re a better writer now and you know those other two books are viable projects — so you actually have bigger, better projects to put your weight behind. And by the way…you wrote your first book in 2008 and have three or more by 2010? That’s awesome progress.
Put your best foot forward. Your debut is like your coming out party. Don’t you want it to be on something you really love and feel great about? If time is on your side, if you’re not going to starve by not shopping out that first book, I’d say wait. Be patient and trust yourself.
Thanks Jeannie… I actually just got a brainstorm on what I’m going to do with this sucker… and it could be huge (if I do it right)
Stay tuned you might see it soon as a valuable marketing piece :>
April
I agree with Kendal and Jeannie. Only put your best out there. And contest-schmontest – I’ve enter two and gotten both good and bad feed back – that’s all it is good for the good criticisms becasue every reader (whether it’s a contest judge, an agent or a publisher) has there own tastes. And revisions suck!! I’m at a point right now in third revsions at the request of an agent. But I feel like it’s promising – becasue she sends it back and says revise this and then resubmit. But I feel like my eyeballs are bleeding. But from what I’ve been told, even if you have this perfect MS that an agent says yes too and even a publisher – you are still going to have to revise some more. And don’t confuse revisions with the plot bunnies…. they are evil little mosnters…..I know they are cropping up every where….. I suggest taking a break and work on something else, or start at the end and work forward.
I think that you have betas giving positive feedback then use that, don’t let that one negative contest judge bother you – I had one that refused to even finish reading my entry or make comments – saying it was too much like a well-known paranormal YA that’s out there.
I can’t offer any sound advice because I think Kendal, Fae, Kat, and Jeannie pretty much said it all. But in whatever decision you choose, good luck and believe it’s the best decision right now, at this time. You can always change your mind later because this is your career and you steer the ship!
Cate,
I know exactly what story you’re talking about!!! And I think while yours is definitely in the same genre, it’s in no way the same story. Forget those naysayers, I think you caught the hypnotic way popular author writes — that may be somewhat similar– but the storyline is not. And needless to say you can’t go wrong with that writing style. People crave it.
Cambria,
You are correct!!!! Wow, are you. I can set it down now and come back to it if I wanted. I don’t have to do anything with it right now. That’s a powerful thought.
Decisions… Decisions.
Or maybe no decision at all, just move on.
Excellent points ladies… Excellent points.
April