The Saddest Thing A Novelist Ever Has To Do

 Once upon a time, I read an article wherein the author, a novelist, described her experience with having to abandon a novel completely. I can’t remember how much of it she’d written; somewhere past half, I think, because the story made me wince with empathy.

Sort of. Because it also made me judge her. Just a little. Surely there was some change she could have made to save the story, regardless of how much rewriting it would have entailed.

It also made me glad that I’m the kind of author who can sit down and write a story straight through without a ton of editing and revising afterward.

Well. Guess God thought I needed to eat a bit of humble pie, because this past fall, I encountered a situation similar to that of my colleague. I had written two novels in my new series, “Crazy Quilt Cabins Christmas,” and written about half of the third one when it just.

Wouldn’t.

Go.

Any.

Further.

Hitting a block about halfway through was nothing new to me, so when it first happened, I did what I always do when that happens: set it aside for a couple of days. Then, I sat down and tried to move the plot forward.

No dice.

I did this several more times, each time the duration of the break longer than the previous. The story wouldn’t budge. I began to question whether I was supposed to cease writing novels altogether. Or to stop writing for self-publication. At the very least, I realized that there was no sense in trying to continue that novel, because I couldn’t figure out what came next. Not even given my partial outline.

It worked out, because December came, and with it, an unusually strong urge to declutter, clean, and redecorate our home. I spent the entire month doing so. The huge task completed, I once again sat down with the novel.

Nothing.

By that time, the itch to wax artistic had grown to annoying proportions. I began drawing and coloring some evenings. That helped, but I really wanted to write stories. I began working on something I’ve thought about doing off and on for years; that is, to create fun educational materials for young children.

That was better, but I still longed to write a lengthy work of fiction.

I finally arrived at the place where I could revisit the half-finished novel without wanting to completely delete it. I took a close look. A critical look.

And understood.

There were three glaring problems with the story. The reason I wasn’t able to make it work was that it would have ended up being abysmally boring.

Another way to see it: it wasn’t working, because I was bored with it, because it was boring.

The answer? Sit down and write out the good things and the bad things about what I’d written so far.

Most were bad.

Then, write down how to fix everything so that all would be good. The result?

I am now happily and enthusiastically writing two thousand words a day. I finally love my characters and have a general storyline that ignites me. I am, as I type out this blog post, almost a quarter of the way through the novel again.

I hope I’ll never write half – or more – of a novel, then realize it is unredeemable. But even if I don’t, I can honestly say that I’m no longer judging the novelist who had to scrap her entire work. And, forevermore I’ll be able to much better empathize with my colleagues who experience a block so big and hard that it causes them to question their calling.

UPDATE NOT TWO WEEKS LATER: I wrote over half of the novel in question, and quit. I'm not sure why, except right now I'm struggling with writing fiction. Click here for a more detailed explanation.