I’m there. Wondering why on earth I felt the need to rewrite this thing from page 1. (Note to self and anyone else tempted to do so–do not do this. Just write the next novel if you think you’ve leveled-up skill-wise.)
I don’t really hate the novel. I just want to be done with it. And I know right now that I need to take another pass through after it’s had a few weeks to sit. Ugh. Looks like it will not be done in time for my birthday next month. Bummer.
Why so annoyed?
I have at least nine other novels I want to write that I’m not working on because I went back to this one.
And I’ve only published two original short stories in the last three months because of this and my little non-fiction projects in March/April.
And the more I work on it the more my mind notices the themes behind it and the more I wonder how that’s going to play when it’s published.
And, as any self-pubber knows, when you stop publishing, sales go down, too. So I’m having daily long-term/short-term goal conflict.
But that’s how it works sometimes. Live and learn.
I have 35 pages left out of 353. Time to get to it…
One way to stay with a book you want to publish that you feel suffers from your lack of skill when you wrote it is to:
(1) read the manuscript through without making any notes;
(2) sit down and write an outline for the book without looking back at the manuscript;
(3) write the book from the outline without looking at the manuscript.
That way you emphasise the bit you probably want to publish (the characters and other ideas) while avoiding the desire to focus on weak verbs, over/under-description, and other minutiae.
A good approach if you choose to do it, although I think I would’ve been better off just moving on to the next novel.
I am not suggesting fixing a book you know needs extensive work is better than writing a new one; only a way to make that extensive work easier if you choose not to put the book in a trunk.