And so, after some deliberation, I have decided to put my main novel on the back burner until I can think of a vastly-improved idea for it.
Basically I'd started draft one aged fifteen, back when I was a tortured high school nothing who had few friends and kept myself to myself a lot. I dug out my mam's old typewriter - an old battered teal-coloured Olivetti - and began it on an August afternoon. It was always a bit Dystopian, but I kept restarting it, convinced it was some kind of Magnum Opus I was writing.
Gradually, over the years I've been making changes to it. In some ways it made progress, but in many others I spent six years on it, just bumbling along and making the same mistakes over and over again. More often than not I got fed up with it. But I kept telling myself that it would be a waste to give up on it after all this time. The trouble was, it seemed to eat up all my thinking capacity. It eclipsed everything else I conceived during this time space, which was a shame because in this time I've had a couple of really good ideas. A lot of them have ended up consigned to notebooks, to be worked on when I get time. But I never will, will I?
Anyway - earlier today I had a discussion with a certain person I'm close to. I won't explicitly mention his name or how I'm close to him - I guess the best way to refer to him is as a form of sensei. (Yes, I'm slightly obsessed with Japan and its culture.) I'd restarted the third draft of the novel for the third time. I gave him the first chapter to read, and although he gave me some good advice on improving it he hinted beforehand that he felt I'd improved as a writer since beginning this and that there were still elements in it of who I was when I was younger. I don't know if he realised this, but he had essentially gleaned from reading it how I've been feeling about it - which is that I've lost heart with it and my refusal to give up on it was an attempt at convincing myself that I'd get there eventually. Using a part of it as my dissertation was an attempt to curb this which fell flat on its face. I guess a lot of what was going on when I began it has since been buried in the past and I've moved on. A number of writers describe their work as their 'babies'. And I guess, in many ways, this novel is my baby. The trouble is, you're supposed to raise a baby and take care of it, nurture it and make sure it develops properly. My 'baby' wasn't doing this. If anything - pardon the morbid image I'm about to use - it was on a life support machine and I was simply refusing to turn off the switch.
I want to be quite clear - I am not completely and utterly pieing this idea. That really would be a waste of seven years. For one thing, a portion of it is still being used for my dissertation, and it's actually one of the better portions. It is instead on the back burner, which is a different thing entirely. It means that I still love these characters and want to do something with them still. But for now, I will merely write down scenes I can think up for them as they go, and see if I can get a better idea out of that. Making that decision earlier was emotional, to say the least, but it needed to be done. And I'd rather have heard such a verdict from someone I trust - at least he let me down gently, certainly more so than some would have.
And don't worry, I'm still creating. I've got a couple of plans that are complete or at least not far off it. Some I even started writing and am a good bit of the way through. I'm not completely at a loss. If anything, I think I feel a bit better for what I'm doing....
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