Keep everything you write. Everything. Writing doesn’t die, it gets reborn, if you choose to revive it. I’m currently reviving old material from the 90s for my female music journalist memoir, and my substack on that same topic, and I’ve been making notes for years. For the project, I’ll also be returning to the bones of a book on women and rock culture that I was commissioned to write for Serpent’s Tail in 90something, but never managed. I am so glad I kept the folder. Apart from anything, it’s fascinating to see what I wrote decades ago!
I think it's a sign that you're on to something worthwhile if the ideas are announcing themselves, uninvited, and the project is refusing to get left behind.
Early in my career, I made what turned out to be my single most important commitment: to finish everything I start. This has wide repercussions in my body of work. First, I never start a project that I’m not prepared to finish. Which means I never start before I have a clear itinerary for my journey through to its destination. This may change in the writing, but it at least sets me out in the right direction. Second, it’s a giant-killer when it comes to being blocked. I simply power through difficult or uninspired scenes with the knowledge that, yeah, the work sucks, but I’ll fix it in the edit.
I can completely relate to so much of this. I especially struggle with the procrastination element where if X is on your plate, then Y starts tapping on your shoulder -- even though a month ago Y didn't seem all that great. I haven't quite cracked a good strategy for managing this, but I think it must come from a combination of fear/lack of confidence in the new project, and the classic grass-is-greener mentality, assuming that the other thing you *could* be working on won't involve the same level of mental gymnastics to get it finished and in front of eyes. But of course we all know that isn't true -- the mental games appear regardless of which project is on the screen! Ah, writing!
All these pieces of unused writing are stepping stones to the writing you complete, in my opinion. Everything is an essential piece of a bigger picture. It took a long time for me to realise that writing is more than pen on paper and is just as much about the liminal spaces in between that nourish our creativity.
Having said that, I completed a first draft of my memoir a couple of years ago and it’s gathering digital dust in a folder on my desktop. Yeah, I must get back to that ...
Oh yes, that being pulled out of sleep, out in the dark. Stumbling around to land the voice, the idea, that penetrates and demands to be heard. My characters for my debut novel spent decades pulling me out of bed when I wanted to give up and hide. I am grateful to them, thanks to them, they live. And I am glad I listened, that I wrote at 4am and 5am and developed a beyond-the-norm way of living around them.
I like the idea of working on two books and would love to know more about how this works for you, how you make it work. I have shelved a couple of novels I planned to write one that seems most demanding but I wonder if I could write two side-by-side. I suspect I would have to devote certain days - or nights - to one and then the other.
Yes! I often jot down ideas/plans and lose motivation to continue with them. A lot of them die and get dropped, others I do return to and ignite, and they turn into something much better than they were.
This post seems freakishy timely as I've recently dug out a story idea I started seven years ago to rework. It was for an age group (I mostly write for children) that hadn't quite found its feet yet (I'm a bookseller - so I knew it was coming!) but now is absolutely booming. I moved away from this style of writing to focus on my teen novel and picture book writing, but I recently pitched a whole list of ideas for this age range, and both my agent and editors picked out the older idea as one of the ones to follow up on. I'm reworking it now with more writing experience and to a tighter brief, but it's funny that I couldn't let go of this particular idea and that it's one that feels worth pursuing again. I wrote about this for my Substack this week too! It's also given me confidence that stepping away from writing my novel for adults is ok while I concentrate on this recently resurfaced work that could have its moment. I feel like I have so few actual good ideas, it's ok if they haunt me for years; it's all going on in the background.
I do have pieces from when I was a teen. But I am never going back to them, I am 50 now. But I am getting better at letting go of pieces that go stagnant or that I've lost my voice on. I will file them away and when I get stuck on current pieces, find myself going back to give it another try. But once they've been in a pile too long, their gone. I scribble out too many pieces that I if I grew too attached, I would drown in drafts. Ha!
I like to think they're not dead, but hibernating. Just resting until my interest springs back. Often, when I find myself finished with the story I'm currently working on, and don't have any idea waiting, I'll go to my sleeping babies, wake one up, and spend some time with it in hopes I'm ready to finish it.
I paused the novel I’m querying at the moment during Covid. I couldn’t even read fiction that looked like my pre-pandemic life for a while, let alone write it.
Keep everything you write. Everything. Writing doesn’t die, it gets reborn, if you choose to revive it. I’m currently reviving old material from the 90s for my female music journalist memoir, and my substack on that same topic, and I’ve been making notes for years. For the project, I’ll also be returning to the bones of a book on women and rock culture that I was commissioned to write for Serpent’s Tail in 90something, but never managed. I am so glad I kept the folder. Apart from anything, it’s fascinating to see what I wrote decades ago!
Sometimes I dictate & record my middle of the night musing using my phone. That way I can get back to sleep, hoping for more inspiration...
I’m the same. If a dead book follows you around it thinks it is alive so …
I think it's a sign that you're on to something worthwhile if the ideas are announcing themselves, uninvited, and the project is refusing to get left behind.
Early in my career, I made what turned out to be my single most important commitment: to finish everything I start. This has wide repercussions in my body of work. First, I never start a project that I’m not prepared to finish. Which means I never start before I have a clear itinerary for my journey through to its destination. This may change in the writing, but it at least sets me out in the right direction. Second, it’s a giant-killer when it comes to being blocked. I simply power through difficult or uninspired scenes with the knowledge that, yeah, the work sucks, but I’ll fix it in the edit.
I can completely relate to so much of this. I especially struggle with the procrastination element where if X is on your plate, then Y starts tapping on your shoulder -- even though a month ago Y didn't seem all that great. I haven't quite cracked a good strategy for managing this, but I think it must come from a combination of fear/lack of confidence in the new project, and the classic grass-is-greener mentality, assuming that the other thing you *could* be working on won't involve the same level of mental gymnastics to get it finished and in front of eyes. But of course we all know that isn't true -- the mental games appear regardless of which project is on the screen! Ah, writing!
All these pieces of unused writing are stepping stones to the writing you complete, in my opinion. Everything is an essential piece of a bigger picture. It took a long time for me to realise that writing is more than pen on paper and is just as much about the liminal spaces in between that nourish our creativity.
Having said that, I completed a first draft of my memoir a couple of years ago and it’s gathering digital dust in a folder on my desktop. Yeah, I must get back to that ...
Oh yes, that being pulled out of sleep, out in the dark. Stumbling around to land the voice, the idea, that penetrates and demands to be heard. My characters for my debut novel spent decades pulling me out of bed when I wanted to give up and hide. I am grateful to them, thanks to them, they live. And I am glad I listened, that I wrote at 4am and 5am and developed a beyond-the-norm way of living around them.
I like the idea of working on two books and would love to know more about how this works for you, how you make it work. I have shelved a couple of novels I planned to write one that seems most demanding but I wonder if I could write two side-by-side. I suspect I would have to devote certain days - or nights - to one and then the other.
Yes! I often jot down ideas/plans and lose motivation to continue with them. A lot of them die and get dropped, others I do return to and ignite, and they turn into something much better than they were.
This post seems freakishy timely as I've recently dug out a story idea I started seven years ago to rework. It was for an age group (I mostly write for children) that hadn't quite found its feet yet (I'm a bookseller - so I knew it was coming!) but now is absolutely booming. I moved away from this style of writing to focus on my teen novel and picture book writing, but I recently pitched a whole list of ideas for this age range, and both my agent and editors picked out the older idea as one of the ones to follow up on. I'm reworking it now with more writing experience and to a tighter brief, but it's funny that I couldn't let go of this particular idea and that it's one that feels worth pursuing again. I wrote about this for my Substack this week too! It's also given me confidence that stepping away from writing my novel for adults is ok while I concentrate on this recently resurfaced work that could have its moment. I feel like I have so few actual good ideas, it's ok if they haunt me for years; it's all going on in the background.
I do have pieces from when I was a teen. But I am never going back to them, I am 50 now. But I am getting better at letting go of pieces that go stagnant or that I've lost my voice on. I will file them away and when I get stuck on current pieces, find myself going back to give it another try. But once they've been in a pile too long, their gone. I scribble out too many pieces that I if I grew too attached, I would drown in drafts. Ha!
I like to think they're not dead, but hibernating. Just resting until my interest springs back. Often, when I find myself finished with the story I'm currently working on, and don't have any idea waiting, I'll go to my sleeping babies, wake one up, and spend some time with it in hopes I'm ready to finish it.
I paused the novel I’m querying at the moment during Covid. I couldn’t even read fiction that looked like my pre-pandemic life for a while, let alone write it.