Time to rip it up?

[TheokinsJ]

(Sorry in advance for the excessive use of metaphors)

I posted a while ago (maybe a month?) that I had run into some trouble with my writing, and that things had come to a halt. I had hit a brick wall and I was trying to find out why the wall was there, what was stopping me from breaking it down and continuing with the book.
I came to the conclusion that it was numerous things; mainly laziness and lack of discipline- I had written 40,000 words, and after about 20,000 I had started half-finishing chapters and not finishing scenes. I had the intention of coming back to these scenes after I'd finished the first draft, to polish them and finish them off. Yet this is what I found was holding me back, the feeling that there were all these leaks in the ship and I could not continue sailing until I plugged them all up.
So I have come to a rather unfortunate, yet I feel necessary conclusion; I need to rip it up and start again.
I need a fresh pages document, and I need to restart, this time making sure not to leave holes in chapters and to fully finish scenes before I progress further.

Does this seem like a good idea? How would you approach restarting a book?

 

[Penpilot]

If you're going to restart, start from scratch. For the first new draft don't refer back to the original manuscript. It will only hold you back because you'll be tempted to transplant sections into the new draft and that's defeating the purpose. Rely on your memory for the details. If something was really good, you would remember it. Once you finish your new first draft, then you can refer back to the original manuscript.

Some authors write a full draft as fast as they can and use that as a trial run for the book. They set aside this first draft and start over and never refer back to the first draft.

 

[GeekDavid]

Thomas Edison is said to have tried over 100 versions of the light bulb before finding one that worked.

Someone is said to have asked him something like, "You've failed 100 times, why don't you just give up?"

His answer: "I have not failed once. I have discovered 100 things that won't work."

Don't look on your first draft as a failure. You've discovered what won't work. If you use that knowledge in your next attempt, you'll still have succeeded.

 

[Philip Overby]

I'm pretty sure my advice was to start over before. If you're having that much trouble with it and it's just not working no matter what you do, then do what your gut tells you. However, if "laziness and lack of discipline" seem to be your main problem, stop writing novels for a bit. It's not helping you to keep butting your head against a longer work if you're not able to complete it. Finish a 100 word piece of flash fiction. Then try 500 words. Keep increasing until you reach a level where you can't complete something (say 10,000 words?) Once you reach that level, you've sort of found out what your threshold is. From there you can focus on getting past that length by slowly building up your tolerance. That's just an idea. It seems like you've tried everything else people have already suggested to you and it's not working. Their suggestions may help for them or other people but ultimately you have decide what method works for you.

 

[Chessie]

Theokins, rip it up baby! Give yourself a fresh start and play with what you have learned so far. Interesting, I was thinking this morning about how we--as writing artists--can connect to the stories we want to write. Its like they call us and we just want to do their beauty justice. And we get frustrated because its not perfect enough and why does it take so long to get it all out? Sometimes we forget how huge it is to tell one person's story, let alone the cast of supporting characters, the setting, etc that tie and allow the story to breathe.

Starting fresh allows us to continue piecing it all together. Just like the light bulb. (Great example) Thanks to Edison's persistence, our entire world is powered by his one idea. Imagine if he had given up on trial #37.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Yep... rip it up if you're not happy with it.

I have a novel that's a pile of garbage. Basically, I like the lot and characters, but the writing (from 2001, if that gives any indication of how green it is...) that isn't worth keeping any of. HOWEVER... I'm going to read a chapter, see what happens, ramp it up in tension and stuff, and re-outline it, so I can rewrite it like a good novel.

I hope you find ditching a project that isn't working, liberating. I've abandoned several projects. I've also pushed through several bad places and completed several books that aren't awesome, but I can work with them. So, this is a journey and along the way, you would probably benefit form a support network. People you can bounce ideas off of when you get stuck. Try calling a friend and letting them ask you questions to spot plot holes before you begin writing again. It might hep!

 

[Helen]

Do NOT rip it up.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re-outline each chapter; try and "see" each chapter and the whole story. Then write.

If not, put it aside and keep coming back to it.

Starting something new may work, or you may end up repeating the same thing with the next one - depends on the root of this problem.

 

[Nobby]

Please, don't rip it up.
Just because you can't do it justice now, doesn't mean you never will.

Try shorter more concise pieces to build up your "chops" if you see what I mean, then take a look again and I bet you will see things through different eyes.

 

[Writeking]

never rip it up. you want want to reference from time to time to get more ideas from it

 

[wordwalker]

Don't rip it up, no. I suppose if you truly wanted to nearly-burn your bridges to force you to move on, you could give it to a friend and say "Don't give this back for the next three years," but even then there's no need to be truly permanent. There's a lot of great information in there (ideas, samples of what you need to work on) even if you don't want to use it that way now.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

Question: Why are you writing it?

I write for the joy of writing, to see words form a story, to get the pictures in my head into a consumable artifact. It's a curious and invigorating process that just makes life more interesting. I've been in situations where I felt as frustrated as you seem and it sucks.

My advice is: don't rip it up, just file it away. Start another project that interests you, even if it's not writing: build a model airplane, repaint your bedroom, restore a vintage 1972 Gremlin. I would write something else that interests you. Maybe writing something else will give you ideas about your current project. Maybe it will just let you know that you don't want to work on your current project.

But that brings me back to my original question: why are you writing it? If you have a contract and need to write this exact story, then I'm with Penpilot: start clean and get through the whole thing before you look back at your old draft. If not, you don't owe anyone anything. Move on to something else and you can always come back to it later if things work out in your head over time. There's no reason to struggle through a project when it doesn't feel like it's working for whatever reason.

Good luck!