Back to writing my book after 4 years - I wrote this?

[gcallan3]

Life gets in the way. Started on a story in 2016. Writing casually until 2020 when we all were thrown into this weird timeline. Now several years later I am revisiting my work only to find I can't remember writing some of it or where my inspiration came from. I'm being a tad hyperbolic but it is hard to return after several years and just pick up where I left off. Sure I am not the only person frustrated by this issue.

Glad to be here

 

[ThinkerX]

I wrote many tales long ago that went nowhere and remained unfinished. Completing the four or five most promising of those stories was one of the reasons I came to this site. I have yet to do so, though most of one should make it into the big project for 2025.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

Perhaps treating your original story like it was written by someone else would help. Something like pretending it's a story from a contest and you have to come up with the next part...Or three new parts. This way you are not tied to what was written before. Another option is to take the general premise of what the story is about and write a new version, only keeping what you like from the first version.

 

[pmmg]

My Current WIP had a 20 years hiatus in the middle of book 2. It happens, and sometimes it comes back to life. But even if it doesn't, another story can still be in us.

 

[ThinkerX]

My Current WIP had a 20 years hiatus in the middle of book 2. It happens, and sometimes it comes back to life. But even if it doesn't, another story can still be in us.

In my case, the gap is closer to thirty years. Both 'Falling Towers' and 'Shadow Sea' started out promising but died in the muddy middle. A way to proceed with 'Falling Towers' came to me while writing the rough draft of 'Exiles Pilgrimage.' Salvaging 'Falling Towers' and maybe 'Shadow Sea' will be the big project (s) for 2027.

 

[Ned Marcus]

I thought my current 10-month hiatus was long, but 20 and 30 years! How are you both (pmmg and ThinkerX) getting back into the stories again?

After 10 months, I've had to slowly reread everything (I was about one third of the way through the novel) editing as I've been going along. Actually, the break has given me a lot of new ideas.

 

[ThinkerX]

I thought my current 10-month hiatus was long, but 20 and 30 years! How are you both (pmmg and ThinkerX) getting back into the stories again?

After 10 months, I've had to slowly reread everything (I was about one third of the way through the novel) editing as I've been going along. Actually, the break has given me a lot of new ideas.

Both stories remained viable in my mind - but they will require extensive revisions. I'm not looking forward to that, especially as 'Falling Towers' has a different magic system than my current tales. The ending I came up with for FT does tie in with the last part of 'Exiles.'

Likewise, some of the characters and events in 'Shadow Sea' are mentioned in the 'Empire' books. I always knew how that story went, but never finished it.

 

[Rexenm]

I have been twiddling my thumbs for a while. Just as I get a burst of inspiration, it comes along with another character. Be it a dream or errand I am required to go on. I have one prospect, then another, never seeming to go anywhere, having any real meaning.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Life stuff delayed us in writing the first of the Books of Binding, and it ended up taking about 15 years and some major restructuring of the entire story, including taking on our third member of Team Lowan and adding another book to the series.

And let me just tell you how fun that is with hypergraphia.

The winner by a marathon is our next series. Epic fantasy trilogy (I know, right!?) centered on a family of spies and assassins and a 17 year-old autistic girl under the protection and guidance of a 700lb talking pig who has her own history and her own secrets. We started this one when we were 15. My wife just turned 50 a couple of weeks ago. Our younger writing partner hadn't even been born, yet. And not only do I somehow still have most of the papers related to the project, I've still got all of the Word files of very early bits and pieces - and I can open them. Word 3.1, baby.

 

[Mad Swede]

I wonder if this depends on what you mean by writing a book?

The earliest drafts of scenes in what became my first novel were written whilst I was serving with UNIFIL, initially whilst sheltering in a bunker in southern Lebanon in the middle of a particularly vicious firefight between the SLA and Hizbollah (we'd tried to break up the firefight but both sides had then brought up heavier weapons, so we called for armoured support from another UNIFIL contingent and took cover until it arrived). Anything to take my mind off what was going on outside.

I didn't do much with any of these texts until nearly 30 years later when I made a concious decision to write as a way of dealing with a couple of major events in my life. At that point those scenes formed the starting point for my first story. And yes, I still have the grubby bits of paper I wrote on in pencil.

 

[skip.knox]

For me, the hiatus is about caring.

When I start into a story, I care about something, maybe even a couple of somethings. One or more characters. An element of the plot or the setting. Whatever it is, that is a moment out of my timeline. <insert hiatus> and now I'm a somewhat different person. I can't possibly care about the story in the same way.

It's like travel. You go to a place and it has this feel to it. Years elapse and you go back and it's just not the same. Yes, Tom, you can't go home again.

If I'm determined to re-visit the story, I just have to realize I need to find some other avenue of connection. A new way to care. That story I began way back when? That one's over.

It's why I don't subscribe to the advice (for me, only for me!) to let a story sit once it has been completed before trying to revise it. For my revisions to work, I need to stay inside the story. I need to care about the same things, in the same way that got me this far.

So, one idea--this is emphatically not advice--is not to try to pick up the threads, but to read what you've written and see how it feels. Then go with that.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I actually have the reverse sometimes. When I write, I immediately jump from one draft to the next, which means there's never more than a few months between drafts. And yet, I sometimes come across pasages that have me question how I managed to write it and where the inspiration came from. Usually I'm pleasantly surprised by what I managed to put down on paper by the way.

Personally, I would not continue writing something I started writing 4 years ago. I have a few projects like that lying around somewhere. But I've changed as a writer, which would give a big tonal shift between the early and later bits and would require lots of editing to make work. My ideas and interests have changed. And I'm just less exited about the old stories.

If you're dead-set on writing this specific tale, then I would start over. Just discard the earlier stuff and treat it as an extensive outline if anyting. Do ask yourself why you couldn't finish it last time. Life always gets in the way. Not just with history altering pandemics, but also just small stuff like having the flue for a week or been busy celebrating your birthday or that busy month at work. If you want to finish something, it's the sort of thing you have to work around.

But I'd just write a different idea. I have plenty of those. No need to revisit an old one I couldn't finish. And maybe I can incorporate some of the old ideas in new projects.

 

[pmmg]

I am willing to continue a story so long as I still believe in it. Time intervals do not matter. For me, in all that time, I always knew I would go back and finish it. So, I just built it up in my head little part by littler part. The years in between, just made me wiser. Perhaps without them, I could not have written it the way it is. I don't regret and am proud of what I have.

I do have another big story in my head that is currently on hold till the current one is done. Its also about 20 years simmering.


Also, for me personally, the advice of let it sit and come back fresh, never works either. No matter the time I let it sit, the benefit only lasts a page or two and then I am back in story edit mode as if I never took a break.

 

[Fidel]

But what made you stop working on your story all of a sudden?
I can't imagine how it must be to start a story in 2016 and leave it for so many years and still remember that you even started

 

[Dylan]

But what made you stop working on your story all of a sudden?
I can't imagine how it must be to start a story in 2016 and leave it for so many years and still remember that you even started

I know right