Young Writers Society

"It'll mean too much to you."

Maggie Stiefvater said that somewhere on tumblr, where the problem with writing a story long term is it starts to represent too many parts of your life, too many challenges. How if you drag working on a story through too many life changes, your mindset is just too different to write it.

I didn't think it was true, then I noticed I have a pattern of throwing out all writing I did when I was in a toxic situation. The problems I experience in those situations bleed into my writing, rendering all relationships tainted by abuse.

And when I tried to go back to my novel Cat Steps— which I've worked on through three if not four major life changes— I found I couldn't really relate to it, anymore, and the thought of rebooting again feels painful. It's a story ridiculously close to my heart.

I can't tell if the advice is true, or if I'm just running into perfectionism where this draft is so new and different I don't know if it's better than the original draft, or if it's worse.

I can definitely get behind the fact that things change and your stories may not apply to you anymore. It's like growing out of a beloved band that you used to love but don't as much anymore and you want to know why. Things change, and that's a hard thing to acknowledge, and whether you like it or not, your stories and projects will as you do too.

If you're worried about working on your project for too long, then it may be time where you try something else? Instead of just doing Cat Steps, you can do Cat Steps as well as another project and you could see how you feel about it after that. Don't force yourself to keep working on this project because it won't get you anywhere, just like trying to watch a show that you liked when you were 10 but don't like it as much now. It's because things can change and will change. If you do want to continue the project, I suggest taking a break from it?

It sounds like you could use one. Just don't stay on this project if you really feel like it's just going to end up being a waste of time of you trying to write something that doesn't apply to you anymore. You could change things around if you wanted to fix that as well if you wanted, but yeah, you can't stop things from changing like that.

Maybe you're putting too much thought into this draft and you keep trying to change things that don't need to be changed and were fine as they were. Another thing you could do to check this is to compare what you like better and I definitely get the "I don't know if this is getting better or worse", and I suggest getting other opinions in for that sort of thing.

Hope I helped.

I'm wondering how much of that correlation between a story and the reality in which you or I live is influenced by the mentality with which we come into the story. I've only had one novel project in particular, and it is relatively new (about two years or so). Even the most initial ideas are about 3-4 years. Sure, it can definitely be argued that the reality of a story is based on your own reality, as your perceptions influence the tone, characters, and setting of a piece. And sure, if you develop that story close enough to your heart, it can stay there, stuck to your emotions and experiences. As such, it will trip over life's challenges just as you do, and will find itself dated as you go through different phases, and perhaps in need of editing and revision to accommodate for your new knowledge/perceptions. This is basically what you're going through now, it looks to me.

Yet, I still like to write the story without rebooting it, and have continued to expand upon the world I've created. That might simply be because of the fact that the story is an escapism for me. It's something I pick up when I want to, work on it, and set it down. This story is incredibly dear to me, as its one of the few things in my existence that actually makes me feel like I'm doing something with my life. It has adapted with my own change in perceptions and knowledge, and has gone far darker in the past year. However, perhaps because of the manner in which I've taken to look at this story and tweak it, it has survived a wide variety of emotional tests, and come out stronger and more developed as a result. It might simply be that I haven't had anything strong enough to push me significantly. It might simply be that the story isn't attached enough to my heart because I don't want it to be attached to my boring emotions and my boring life, or that it varies sharply enough from my own perceptions. It might simply be that, when I have multiple ideas over time for the same concept, I like to find middle ground/combine them.

Still, I wonder if perhaps those revisions are entirely a product of the changes in your life and your new experiences, or if they are partially due to the mentality with which you write.

I... would reluctantly agree with Maggie. Reluctantly, because I totally, totally understand what it is to fall in love with a novel so that you live and breathe it, and it is so hard to leave it. But, sometimes it's better to let it go.

I had that happen with FREAK, which, as you know, was my baby for over a decade. It was the hardest thing to give up, because not only was it a story I worked hours and days and years on, but it was also a sort of self therapy which got me through some very tough times.

But... there were too many plot holes that were there and every time I would edit it, more would appear, plus the various writing styles I had from the time I was a young teen and matured as an adult were starting to look really weird since they were so mixed together. I was better off rewriting it, which was painful to me. I also started realizing that editing it was starting to trigger me into going back into those sorts of hard periods of life, if that makes sense, which was also unhealthy for myself.

So... I gave FREAK up. But, giving up that novel was super hard to do and I honestly had to take a break from writing for several years because all my writing was about FREAK, FREAK, FREAK, and then I didn't have FREAK, and it was really odd. Honestly, I think I put so much toward FREAK that I started to forget that there were other good ideas that were worth exploring.

So... now I am working on another novel. It is still very humble and new and I am not as attached to it as FREAK. It doesn't rule my life, but it does intrigue me and I would love to see it finished. I am not sure if it'll ever be publishable, but I would like to read it, and that is enough for me and I am content with this.

I wouldn't just obsess over one story and be super perfectionistic about it, but on the other hand I wouldn't go too far the other direction and just have all stories be meaningless. If you worked on a story for years in the past, maybe you need to take a break from it, but if, after you take a break from it, you want to go back to it with a sort of fresher state of mind rather than feeling forced to boycott it, that's fine! (The alternative, wanting to work on something but being like "NO!" and not doing it at all, sort of suggests quite a bit of anger at yourself to me.) The problem is really that, when you get too absorbed into something, it's like some sort of dark and damp place where no air or light can get in, and things just start to fester and rot, essentially. But if you're not absorbed at all, it's like there's no grounding or moisture and you can't really grow any ideas that way.

@Kaos I think you're onto something with how I changed something that didn't need to be changed. I poked my latest plot tweak and found it crumbled under the weight of every other player that should've been involved with the story at this point. So now I'm tweaking it again and I like it much better.

Funnily enough, this post was prompted after I had just taken a year~ long break from the novel for another project xD Something was wrong but I just couldn't quite tell what!

@TheSilverFox I like that perspective! Cat Steps has always been a power fantasy for me, because it's always been about winning against all odds, against somebody who is basically everyone who's ever hurt me. Which is what makes the story hard to write, some times, and something I come and go from.

I like to think that the story's made me better. It's hard to tell though, because it's not like there's a control available...

@Snoink I haven't fallen into that trap with this story, not really— I've rebooted it so many times that the pain of doing it again isn't really something that hurts.

I do agree with Maggie on principle, and who knows I might end up giving up on this story, but the thing is I've never really only written one novel. I've had other novels take up my attention for periods of time. I found it an interesting idea, but part of me thinks I've managed to avoid it because each period in my life is marked by such a wildly different plot to the story that they're unrecognizable. It was a sappy teen romance when I was a younger teenager, a clunky mess of figuring out social rules when I was in my late teens (aka, when I was in college!), and now it's morphed into a dark political power fantasy for people trying to fight for the right to exist the way they are.

The protagonist is really only the same in name and grit, and I think this willingness to sacrifice a story's purpose is why I've kept with it. It has been whatever I needed at any point I need, and I've managed to divorce the story at the life changes I've gone through so they actually are totally different narratives— the magic systems are even different.

This story is a phoenix that keeps rising out of the ashes and I love it for that.

@Werthan Very interesting take on the concept of meaning. I like it.

George RR Martin could benefit from this advice, Rosie.

@CarryOnMrCaulfield anything constructive to say about the topic?

Well, I will say that I do disagree with her argument. Taking time to work on a story, specifically one in book form, is important, as a rushed product is almost always sub-par, but that is not to say that the longer you work on something the better it will become. Yes, the more time you will have to improve the prose itself, because, as writers, our skills develop over time. Writing is a very progressive process. But what some people, even many writers just beginning their journey, sometimes forget that there is a substantial difference between "writing" and "storytelling". While they can, in theory, exist without the other, so long as a gifted prose writer's story is coherent enough and a gifted storyteller's prose is passable, it can occasionally stick out as being painfully obvious. For instance, Hemingway was a fantastic writer who told mediocre and sometimes even boring stories, while Fitzgerald was a fantastic storyteller with a prose that was above-decent at best. While taking time to write a story can benefit the development of your prose, it really does nothing to improve an already-planned story. If anything, it can potentially hinder it. The more someone works on a story, particularly an extensive novel, there is more time for the writer to come up with new ideas to expand what is already going to be a long book. Intricacy and length is, many times, detrimental to the book itself. This is something that I myself struggle with. I have a basic story in my current love project, which has been in development for three years, but the story has expanded to an almost ostentatious extent.

I can honestly say that we differ in terms of personal outlook on our respective works. I myself hate each and every previous draft of my current novel. I reflect on the hackneyed events of the story as well as lackluster prose. But we are our own worst critics. I am writing low fantasy, and it is sometimes difficult not to unintentionally rip off of A Song of Ice and Fire, which I have actually done by accident a couple times that it made me cringe when reading through again.

Anyway, what I said is probably nothing new, but I just wanted to give my opinion on the subject.

I found this with The Never Weather Chronicles. I started that when I was eighteen and carried on adding pieces, then went back to it a few years later and I could barely relate to the characters at all. Every time I went back to it I felt like I was dipping into a pond of stagnant water.

To get over it I put the draft in a box and started with a fresh page, and started to list the things I really liked about it. Then I looked at the different elements piece by piece and categorised them into things I liked, things I wanted to change, and things that I felt a depressing sense of apathy to.

When I got down to it, I found that a lot of the things I cared about when I started writing it, I no longer cared about anymore, and that's okay. It kind of felt like I was writing a letter to my younger self. I told it about all the good things it needed to remember and hold on to, because they still matter and I wish I had taken the time to appreciate them, and all the things that don't actually matter as much as much as they first seemed, that really it's okay to just let go of, and all the things that I worried about so much when really they'll work themselves out in the end.

Once I'd broken it down to the skeleton of what I wanted to keep I started to rebuild again with new ideas and fresh blood.

I remember being reluctant to change a piece of plot because it would make anything that happened from that time onward redundant, but then, it didn't matter. I could leave it with rotting branches or cut it off the decay and let it grow again. In the end, dead branches make pretty good firewood, and wood ash is great fertiliser.

Getting rid of a huge chunk of the story that I had loved gave my character room to develop beyond the apathetic teenager I had conjured. His fate was no longer doomed to the imagination of my teenage self and my grown-up angst, and instead he maintained the beautiful angst of my teenage self with the imagination and perspective of an adult.

You're awesome, and I adore you. It's because you're smart, and also because you're like a dog with a bone and when you find something to be passionate about you'll fight for it through wind and fire. I think you're more than capable of putting your plot back together and making it even stronger and more meaningful than before, because you're amazing, and you're good at it. It's just whether you can bring yourself to take it apart first.

I honestly can't really work on a novel for that long. My interests shift, my personality shifts, my understandings shift. Generally a few months of working on a project and I go "ew, what am I doing?" Which is not very good, because it makes it hard to finish anything.

But projects that I have powered through in the past, and have kept writing for over a year, I've ended up improving, and then ditching the story because there's many things about it that I want to change for future novels. So essentially, I'm sharpening my skills to eventually finish a novel that I don't hate... *rambles*

I think it really depends on the person, and maybe the story, honestly.

Holysocks wrote:I honestly can't really work on a novel for that long. My interests shift, my personality shifts, my understandings shift. Generally a few months of working on a project and I go "ew, what am I doing?" Which is not very good, because it makes it hard to finish anything.

But projects that I have powered through in the past, and have kept writing for over a year, I've ended up improving, and then ditching the story because there's many things about it that I want to change for future novels. So essentially, I'm sharpening my skills to eventually finish a novel that I don't hate... *rambles*

I think it really depends on the person, and maybe the story, honestly.

It used to be the same with me. I could never focus on a single project. I always jumped around. I have finally been able to overcome that by writing several POV's with their own individual arcs, so it merely seems like different stories in the same world.

CarryOnMrCaulfield wrote:George RR Martin could benefit from this advice, Rosie.

xD

So I've been working on Unruly for more than five years now. I started it when I was eighteen, and my protagonist was 18. I had just graduated from boarding school, she was about to graduate from boarding school. I had been in love with a friend's boyfriend for three years - she had been in love with a friend's boyfriend for three years. At first I thought I had made a protagonist who was nothing like me, but as the years go on I realise we've shared a lot of attributes the entire time.

What I actually think is interesting is that rather than growing too close to the story, or letting the story reflect too much of my life, my life has actually grown away from the story. I got over the intensity of boarding school, I realised that that guy I was in love with was probably not worth all that angst, etc. etc. But Astrid's story stayed pretty much the same.

But I've written three and a half drafts in five years, because wow, novels stagnate the longer you have the word doc open. (That seems like such slow progress when I say it like that but HEY I WAS DOING OTHER STUFF). I've also written a first draft of something completely different, not just from Unruly but from anything I've ever written during that time, and I am as much in love with that novel as I am with this one. And I'd say that's probably what keeps the cogs turning. Whenever I start getting annoyed with Astrid and her issues, I go and churn out 10k on something else (sometimes Silk, sometimes something completely different), and I come back and see why I loved the story with fresh eyes.

So taking holidays from stories is good. Taking a step back is good. Realising when you're too close is good.

But I don't think it's ever good to give up on something you truly love, just because it's been a long time. Think of a novel a little bit like a marriage. If the marriage isn't working, then sure, it's time to get divorced. But if it just seems to be taking a long time, uh oh, you should have thought of that before you said the vows typed the title into the "save as" box.

StellaThomas wrote:

CarryOnMrCaulfield wrote:George RR Martin could benefit from this advice, Rosie.

xD

So I've been working on Unruly for more than five years now. I started it when I was eighteen, and my protagonist was 18. I had just graduated from boarding school, she was about to graduate from boarding school. I had been in love with a friend's boyfriend for three years - she had been in love with a friend's boyfriend for three years. At first I thought I had made a protagonist who was nothing like me, but as the years go on I realise we've shared a lot of attributes the entire time.

What I actually think is interesting is that rather than growing too close to the story, or letting the story reflect too much of my life, my life has actually grown away from the story. I got over the intensity of boarding school, I realised that that guy I was in love with was probably not worth all that angst, etc. etc. But Astrid's story stayed pretty much the same.

But I've written three and a half drafts in five years, because wow, novels stagnate the longer you have the word doc open. (That seems like such slow progress when I say it like that but HEY I WAS DOING OTHER STUFF). I've also written a first draft of something completely different, not just from Unruly but from anything I've ever written during that time, and I am as much in love with that novel as I am with this one. And I'd say that's probably what keeps the cogs turning. Whenever I start getting annoyed with Astrid and her issues, I go and churn out 10k on something else (sometimes Silk, sometimes something completely different), and I come back and see why I loved the story with fresh eyes.

So taking holidays from stories is good. Taking a step back is good. Realising when you're too close is good.

But I don't think it's ever good to give up on something you truly love, just because it's been a long time. Think of a novel a little bit like a marriage. If the marriage isn't working, then sure, it's time to get divorced. But if it just seems to be taking a long time, uh oh, you should have thought of that before you said the vows typed the title into the "save as" box.

Very similar to a character of mine. Jaycen Black was seventeen when I was seventeen, underwent the same mood swings that I did, and even mirrored some of the exact same BS I went through that year (I went through some serious crap in 2013. Eventually I realized that the character was too much like me, but I kept him as is because he is a very important character to me. He has not changed since his original inception, only in the fact that he is now a POV and not just a side character. Now I am currently trying to make him more of a 14th century Holden Caulfield as opposed to a knock off of myself (even though 17 year old me was, unfortunately, a knock off of Salinger's titular "hero").

I'm trying to make him as human as possible. He's a cynical and borderline pathological liar who is a skilled manipulator, but he had a heart of gold and just wants to do good in the world. His arc is really about him sorting his life together and rising to become the type of person he wants to be, without the dictation of others and without being defined by his many, many faults.

I suppose this topic is a bit old now and I'm mainly repeating what other people already said, but I think when you work on a story "too long," a few things happen:

1. You grow as a person. You learn new depths about new issues, you care about new things, you realize when you were being naive or ignorant in the past.
2. Your interests shift. Even if it's just a CHANGE instead of a growth, sometimes you just plain stop liking certain things as much.
3. You grow as a writer. Especially if it's been several years, you might have learned SO much about characterization and plot structure that when you look at the early chapters, they're almost insurmountably different in mindset and style.
4. Writing attached to certain life periods can end up with disproportionate sentimental value - or dredge up unpleasant memories - once you've moved past those experiences.

A really common one, which is very applicable on YWS, is people who start a story in high school and it becomes their life and soul, their dream story. They work on it for years, grow up, mature, learn the craft of writing, but have a really difficult time letting go of the single story that's captivated them for 10 years. For all these reasons, it gets increasingly difficult to get through and finish it and polish it and meet your satisfaction. I.e. the subject matter will keep undergo constant tweaking, the writing technique will demand revision after revision as you learn more, the areas of focus and emphasis will keep shifting, etc etc.

People who are practiced and have written several novels often start writing them really fast. Like within 3 months if they're full time, or within a year if they're part time. I think one advantage of writing stories *quickly* is that it ends up very FOCUSED. You don't have time for all that self-exploration that sends you wandering down different paths. Just here's an idea, boom, done, now explore the next thing.