For four coffee-stained years, I devoted myself to my novel. It was to be a cautionary tale: perceptive, tender, yet wildly satirical and entertaining – a stark look at the world made bearable through presentation.
The book became a crucible for all I cherish in craft and in belief. My identity and my claim to legitimacy. Who I am and what I believe. My reason for getting out of bed.
Yet, it unraveled despite all efforts. Effort, whether redoubled or relaxed, seemed only to push the work further from my vision.
So I am stopping.
The moment of realization was unceremonious, arriving via movie preview. There on the screen flashed my book, but better. This wasn’t the sole reason for halting – I am familiar with “there are only so many stories” and “my voice is unique” – but it was a signpost.
Despite being armed with skill and passion, envisioning a battle of wits I could win, I found myself at odds with my work for nearly the entire four years. I believed that with enough precision, focus, energy, and writing ability, I could make it work. As the pages accumulated, so did the work’s inadequacy. Sentences, then pages, then characters, plot, and message – all crumpled. But questions of capability haunt every writer, yes? Isn’t a book nothing more than countless decisions? Just fix it.
“Fix it” was my daily mantra for the last three years. With each attempted fix, new problems emerged. I mistook determination to patch up cascading disasters as a well-defined writing process. Let it sit, come back, remember why I started writing, more research, less research. Keep it to myself. Share it. Writing courses. Different times, places, ways. Illustrations. Iterations. Incantations.
It was a relentless test of artistic endurance. More, harder, better. Any progress was never binding.
There is a quiet and small kind of madness in continuing to write a book that fails to thrive.
The book remains as far from being satisfying, cohesive, substantive – most precisely, good – as it was three years into its drafting. And almost as far from The End.
This is a mercy killing.
With a thimbleful of courage, I acknowledge the end of this story’s journey.
This is a hard thing.
The once robust potential of the “Shitty 1st Draft” withered into the “Shitty 18th Draft.” A failure of sorts, but the greater failure would be to persist in futility.
This is a demoralizing thing.
The novel was like that okay-ish boyfriend from when you were 27 – the relationship you stick with because the alternative seems worse. Both the ex-boyfriend and this book offer harsh truths: the impossibility of manufacturing something good with only jaw-clenched sheer will, the futility of persisting with the untenable. Lessons in limits and misalignments of perceptions, and whatnot.
In the aftermath, I strive for equanimity, grappling with the singular shame of abandoning a four-year project, a project that, in my stubborn moments, I contend I should have been able to complete. I also seek to embrace the dizzying liberation that accompanies this loss.
Shockingly, this good and right decision does not come unencumbered by pesky human emotion.
There were good enough parts: some great passages, some solid scenes peopled with strange and familiar characters and their strange and familiar delights and horrors. Yet, a few bright sparks could not ignite the whole.
Still, oh, the legitimacy of writing a novel! Claiming space among the revered, the excellent, the mighty. Those with stick-to-itness like oatmeal that’s overstayed its welcome. But I’ve gotten this far without being outrightly dismissed as a dum-dum, so perhaps my place among novelists remains waiting. For now, I can only plant my flag in other places where I have already staked a claim.
The task now is to reset the board and pulverize the “If I stop writing a novel will I just…disappear?” and the “Am I nothing but a wordsmithing ne’er-do-well?” and the brief isolation this moment brings.
My early writing thrived on humor, political, and cultural essays. It’s also an election year, and the world isn’t getting less nutty. A visit to those realms is in order, but I’m wary of committing too quickly even though I expect my first (rebound) piece will be smoother, better, and fun. And likely shorter.
Some people might urge me to revisit the unfinished book. It’s tempting to romanticize a future reunion in 5-10 years, that I’m just exiling it to the hinterlands, or letting it hang out in the transporter’s pattern buffer. But I’m a realist. I can learn a great deal from my novel’s absence and gain much from its years-long presence.
In other words, I’m chopping it up for parts.
Say what you will, but I never did that to my ex-boyfriends.
I read your piece feeling the excruciating rawness of it and with every line i've wanted to yell: " Even the masters experience self-doubt; you're only truly a writer once you've tasted the bitterness of imposter syndrome." but I must respect your decision and bow to your courage. May the rebound be sweet, and as rebounds do, may it propel you forward, upward, joyfully.
Nothing is ever wasted. On to the next! I can’t wait to read what you’ll put next into the world ❤️