Scared to Let Go
It’s been an interesting summer. My first book, The Sinister Sweeetness of Splendid Academy, is off at copy edits right now. I’ll admit, on the final round of line edits, I found myself almost physically unwilling/unable to hit send. To declare myself DONE! There had to be something I could do to make it better, right? Maybe just rewrite that first chapter one more time? It was — and remains — a scary thing, that letting go of a manuscript, handing it over to an editor/copyeditor. (And someday soon, it probably will be just as difficult to know it’s in the hands of a critic/critical reader. Excuse me while I wet my pants now.)
But it had to be done. I cashed the check.
And I wrote another book.
And then got even another idea. An amazing idea that gives me the shivers.
Now I’m in that prayerful time, the last weeks leading up to my total immersion in that New Idea. There’s only one thing –I shouldn’t call it new. This one is a manuscript I’ve started and stopped so many times, rewritten in different points of view — different genres, even! — that it feels like an old friend.
An old friend I wanted to poison with arsenic at times, but an old friend. You know what I mean.
The thing is, I just realized — it wasn’t the story that was at fault. It wasn’t weak, or flawed, or any of that other nonsense that can lead to the manuscript graveyard. It was me — I had the story muddled. I’ve been telling it from the POV of the wrong character. Now that I’ve realized that, it all seems so… obvious. Natural. But I had to let go of my original idea, my belief that the story belonged to this other character.
If I made this “realization” sound easy, it wasn’t. I’ve been fooling with this one for a long, long time. I just couldn’t let the other POV character go.
Do you find yourself doing that? Staying married to one idea of how a story “should” go, when the story itself is telling you something else entirely? Does it derail you? Does it invigorate you? Does it drive you to drink copious amounts of gin, and flirt with a diabetic coma brought on by too much British chocolate?
Or is that just me?
Maybe you find yourself feeling like this in your writing life:
What Texas kids do at rodeos: Mutton Busting.
I know I do, and often. But usually it’s a good scared.
Stay scared, Writer Friends. Terrified even. Hold on as long as you can.
Just know when it’s time to let go.
07/13/2011 at 4:25 pm
Love this post! Eeek, I’ll be at that hitting “send” for the last time on my first book soon (line edits are coming this week) and I’m sure that will FREAK ME OUT as we get closer to no more changes. And yay new project!! And figuring out the right way to tell the story that will make it work. That’s killer sometimes, putting so much energy into a story, and then in the end it not working. So glad you can revisit the concept and tear into it again!
07/14/2011 at 12:50 am
I love that you included that picture! It’s the best. Can’t wait to see what you do with that new/old story. Keep eating that chocolate. 🙂
08/02/2011 at 3:07 pm
Great post, Nikki. I had the same experience with my first novel. I wrote it and edited it and reworked it and polished it, but something always bothered me about it. I pushed those thoughts away and started querying it. I got a lot of interest but no takers, but as I was onto my next book, I quickly realized that No. 1 wasn’t where it should be and I stopped sending it out.
Two more books later, that first story has been popping back into my mind more, and a few weeks ago I realized the same thing as you. I had told the story from the wrong character. In its current version, the novel’s main character is someone I don’t know as well. I tried to fit him in there, shoved him in because I felt that I needed a way into the story and he would be it. But now I look at it, and I realize that one of the supporting characters, one of my favorite characters — the shy kid in the corner — is actually the true protagonist.
Funny how that works. 🙂 Some stories just take a while telling us.