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I know how you feel Ariel. Recently, I have had to do something that the title suggests. For nearly a year now I have been working on my longest, most ambitious, and greatest piece of fiction, in my opinion at least. In the opinion of others, well, not so much. The story was called Hero, and the need to write it blossomed after three months of hard thinking and forming a story. I officially sat down to write--and got somwhere--on December 19th, 2012. I didn't know that I was going to write a book nearly 170,000 words long--and still writing--when I sat down that December Night a few days from Christmas. In fact, I thought it was going to fall short, and be just another 200 pager as I always write. If only it had been that, or rather, if only I had known it was going to be something so much bigger than that.
So, when I began writing, I wrote for hours, and days, the story gren and grew. Everyday when I came home from school, I would forget everything and I would have to return to the fictional town of Seadele, California I had created for the story. I didn't even feel like I was doing much work, the story told itself, it was like listening to an audiobook, trying to write down everything, but you just couldn't do it fast enough. That was the kind of book I was writing, soon after, I knew that's the book I wanted people to read. A book they just couldn't read fast enough, one that would keep them on the edge of their seat, cause them to stay up all night and maybe even miss the bus, in which they would rejoice because now they could finish without the distractions of life. It would be the one book I could honestly say I was truly proud off, and I would ave people just begging for the sequel. It would have been beautiful.
Of course, the problem with it was, most of that was a dream. Sure, I got to chapter 7 in a few weeks, did some light editing and chugged on. But, sometime around Chapter 9 I started to slow down. I had originally belived I would be able to finish the book sometime in April. Now it's September, and the anniversary of me starting it is almost upon me. And I think I still have probably 20,000 more words to write, if not more, to just finish the MS. Maybe 15,000 words of extra and stuff that should have been in there, and a lot of tousands of words taken out. Of course, I decided I needed a second opinion on it, since I've learned to use the phrase 'I feel as though I am writing a book only I will like very much.' to kind of qoute Jane Austen on Emma.
But, what every writer faces is that, sometimes, the second opinion--the review--is what breaks you. It's what disheartens you, and even though it does give you the motivation to do better and prove that you're more than some ridiculous writer who will never have a book on the shelves of even Wal-Mart, you still feel discouraged. And for the most part, I perservered through these negative reviews, but as they kept coming and coming, no one feeling that excitment that I felt when I was writing, it the story started to crumble, and I stopped writing 10,000 words per sitting, per week. Slowly, I could barely convey the simplest of metaphors without feeling tired and depressed. Soon, I was only writing 300 or less words per sitting before x-ing out of Word and watching Husky videos on YouTube. God I want Husky, you wouldn't believe.
Anyways, by the time I was on chapter 15, I was starting to look for a publisher for it, because I was still writing, chugging through as much as I could, but this was all before the many reviews that I got for it. I found an author consultant. It was happy, we were actually talking about executing this plan, actually making Hero a real thing. People would see it at Barnes and Nobles, and they would hear about it on the news 'That 13 year old kid who wrote a book on the New York Times bestseller list', people would be referencing the book and talking about it while I sat next to them blushing my ass off because they were talking about it. Yeah, you get all these magnificent dreams, and it only takes the smallest little rainstorm to make them crumble like a sandcastle at the beach. And you stare at the crumbled sancastle and cry because it took you so long to build it, you put so much work into it. You thought you could win the blue ribbon. What a lie, what a lie.
So, about three weeks after I talked to the consultant, and I was sure I was going to be able to finish and edit the book by December, have it rewritten by January, and starting to sent it off in the Spring, I started getting feedback from people who I sent it to so long ago, I forgot I sent it to them. Some had recently read it. My sandcastle was washed away. 'Boring' 'Ridicilous' 'After the first chapter, I had had enough.' 'Monotone' 'Stupid' 'Just...bad', it was the writing equivalent of a preformer getting booed on stage. It was humiliating, it was saddening, it was heartbreaking. Characters who I felt like I knew, a city that I felt like was my second home--I knew every street, where they lived, and who to go to for my Alegbra homework--a story that I felt like I would be able to carry on for most of my teenage years. It call came down around me, a shower of glass, the earth quaked, the sandcastle fell after bering ravenged by the harsh waves of critics.
And after weeping, screaming, and fearing to write for three days straight, I made a descion that would change the course of the next few months--well, it's going to anyways--I decided I wasn't going to publish it. I emailed my consultant, a good author friend of mine--he was the one who told me he couldn't read anything after chapter 1--and I just told myself, 'I've literally written a story I will only like very much. I have just written a book only I have enjoyed. A book that I can only finish, and the world will not.' I am very dramatic, so spare me, still, I decided I was going to keep this world in my head, and finish it, but only for my eyes to see. No one else would read it because they would never know my joy, only I understand it. And some people are going to say it's not that bad, but it's bad. Maybe not as bad as my first book, maybe worse than my first book, but it's nothing that I dreamed.
So, I let it go. It's been nearly a week, and I haven't so much as opened the document on my flashdrive. Instead, I've been working on the sequel to my already published book, making sure it's better than the first so that I can make up for the horrible first novel, not to mention a novella I plan on publishing soon. And you know what? I think, I think I feel liberated. I feel like a strange weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, I feel as though everything is clearer, I feel free to write again. I don't feel bogged down by this anchor made of stone. I don't feel as bad about my writing, I don't feel like writing is a job anymore, it almost feels like the hobby it started out as.
Maybe I am still meant to write Hero, but maybe just not right now. Maybe, I'm meant to write and do other things before I write it. Maybe I'm supposed to finish the first series I started. There's even a chance I'm not supposed to write it all, maybe it's just something I needed to go through, something that I needed to elarn. I'm not sure what the lesson is yet, but I know that there's a reason I've gone through this process. And yes, I am a christian--a bad one, mind you--but, I don't beleieve that you have to believe in some kind of higher power to know that everything happens for a reason, that some things are random, but random for a reason. You don't have to believe in a higher power to know that some things you just have to learn from. It's like a baby learns not to touch a hot stove, or learns to crawl and walk, and to even talk. Everything is a learning, evolutionary process.
It just is.
The lesson that I want to bring to anyone who is an aspiring writer (I still am, but we can all learn from each other right?) is that, you need to learn that if you love what you've written, at some point you ned to set it free. This could mean sending it off to reviewers, it could mean just taking a break from it, it could even mean just stopping and saying 'no, not now'. If it comes back, meaning if you're able to bounce back, come back to the story 6 months later, or whenever, then it's yours. It means you're meant to do it. But, if you feel liberated, if you feel like you can suddenly see clearer than before now that you've dropped this project, then it's not yours. It's not time. Let it stay free, don't look back to see if it's coming. If it's coming, it will come, if it's not, then it will keep going.
