Writing is a lot of work. Short story, novel, flash fiction, web copy, screenplay… whatever your project, lots of brainpower and time and effort go into it.
I spent over a month writing Cheering Up Zander. It was a simple but entertaining novel. Despite the fun I had and the effort I put into the story, I’m not pleased with it.
The dialogue needs work. The plot needs work. In fact, the whole thing needs work. Incidents that I thought were humorous fell flat. One character’s motivations were kind of blown out of proportion, and she was more cartoony than, well, menacing.
After looking over the draft and figuring out how to improve the whole thing, I came to a pretty disappointing conclusion: This might not be my first published novel.
But I’m not pounding the floor and wailing angrily over wasted time. Because, really, writing Zander wasn’t a waste of time. I learned more about plotting and pacing than I could from a simple outline. I also learned what I expect in my own work, among which are high quality dialogue and description. If I think my writing resembles the kind of writing that doesn’t excite me or make me want to open my laptop, then I’m not pleased with it.
So what’s going to happen to Zander? I’d hate to get rid of it altogether, so I’m going to let it sit for a while. That could be a couple of weeks or a couple of months. When I’m ready to revisit it, I’ll have a detailed improvement plan.
In the meantime, I’ll write more stories. Shorter ones, maybe no longer than 30K. Pieces that will be easier to edit. Pieces that won’t overwhelm me when I see the total word count and realize, “Oh, crap. I gotta look at all those words again.”
I do have an idea for a novella. A weird one with dark sci fi elements. Definitely a bizarre piece, one that I didn’t think I’d ever really want to write, but it’ll give the creative muscles a deeper stretch.
