Hating my project

[MsFish]

So, I now officially hate the novel I'm working on.  I'm supposed to be writing this week, but I'm not because I don't want to write this book.  I think it's stupid and badly written and not worth finishing.  

I don't know if that's only my perspective, or if it really is just a bad book.  So here's my dillemma:

Do I finish, or not finish?

A part of me says--finish what you started.  I'm over halfway done--could finish it in a week or two if I put some serious writing time into it.  But I hate it.  So I don't want to.  So I haven't been doing it.  

Another part of me says--move on to something you care about.  I have this great idea for a vampire novel brewing, even though it's not quite ready yet.  

Or maybe I've just hit another non-writing spurt.  I hit those sometimes.  

So, opinions?  What do y'all think I should do?

[Nessa]

I go through love/hate phases with stories, too. Discouragement is easy to give in to, but don't! Perhaps you could give yourself a little break from it and come back later.

[MsFish]

I think part of the problem is that I took a break.  I've been super busy for the last week and a half, so I haven't written, and now I don't want to work on it anymore.

[Fellfrosch]

As someone with an infamous track record for jumping ship on projects halfway through, I say finish it--the odds are good that you only hate it because you're in the middle of writing it, and not because it's actually bad. I've had to teach myself to finish things--to be excited about the project itself, and not just the freshness of starting a new one. If you quit now, the odds of you quitting your vampire book before it's finished go up dramatically.

[Nessa]

Well do some writing on the other thing, then. That often works as a good jumpstart and you can come back to the old one later.

Or, you could scrap the whole thing and count it as a good experience in what not to write about.

Try pushing your way through one chapter, and when you're done you'll be happy to have at least some of it finished and perhaps that will be enough to keep your motivation.

I agree with Fell that your feelings on it right now aren't necessarily indicative of the quality of the writing.

[MsFish]

If you quit now, the odds of you quitting your vampire book before it's finished go up dramatically.

A part of me agrees with this.  But the other part of me says, it's not as if I haven't finished novels before.  I've got three complete.  

[Parker]

If I could write through Buttersby and get it into a form that I'm pleased with, you can do the same with your Fairy Tale book.  No doubt about it.  Here are some things I do when I get stuck:

Remind myself that this is a first draft.  I'm allowed to be bad in a first draft.

Skip whatever part I'm working on now--just put in a brief explanation of what happens, then go on to the next scene that I'm interested in writing.

Write myself through it.  Sit down at the computer and vent my frustrations on screen--to myself.  This almost always gets me through the tough times.

Fish--don't give up on a project you've devoted that much time to.  Look at it this way--if you finish it, then that's one more book you can claim to have written.  Finish it for that, at least.  So when some big wig editor asks you, you can say something impressive and not really be lying.  

[Shrain]

Fish, I think Parker is right on. I do a lot of the same things if I start getting EditorEye where I think all my stuff sucks. Better to push through than to look back and wonder what if, right?

[MsFish]

Yeah, Parker is right.  But I don't WANT to!

*Fish retreats to the corner and snivels.

[Archon]

I suppose I am a bit late to the party, but my two cents equal approximately this:

No story is completely unsalvageable. My current project has evolved into something completely different than what I originally meant it to be. Find ways that you can incorporate ideas that are new and exciting to you, so that you will be mare anxious to write. The only thing you have to be careful of is that your story doesn't become a chimera, a mix of many different animals that should never be put together.

I also agree with Parker that it sometimes helps to work on a different part of your book, and then come back to a part that is causing you difficulty. I always do this, and if it weren't for this technique I would probably be somewhere around page 20.

As for the snivelling, cheer up. Writing doesn't always have to be your favorite thing to do, but if you leave it on a bad note, it will take you a lot longer to come back to it. Tough it out for a bit, and when you are done, you will be in a much better position.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Even Brandon quit writing a book (Mythwalker)...though part of the social aspect of it made it into Mistborn eventually.

(I still really liked the magic system of Mythwalker and want to see it somewhere else someday...)

You've finished books before--have you hit your first million words yet? (If not, you might want to keep writing just for the sake of overcoming the "the first million words you'll write will be crap" wall.) Do you have something else you really want to be writing right now? (If so, what's stopping you? Sometimes setting one thing aside and working on something else for a while can get you reinvigorated on the original work after a while.) Is there a better angle to approach your current idea from? (If what you're doing right now isn't working, and you know a way to do it that you think will work better, why not do it?)

If your only options are write this or write nothing, then writing nothing is the wrong choice.

[Nessa]

Found a great quote for you! From OSC's "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy":

"Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things:
1. The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English.
2. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel."

So, hey, you're halfway there!  

[MsFish]

I actually had those paragraphs printed out and hung on my wall for a while.  The photocopies are still around here somewhere.  Maybe I need to break out that book again.  

[Parker]

So allow me to highjack this thread for a second, just because I'm dealing with a similar problem.  Well--I'm writing.  A lot, actually, and I feel like it's going well.  But at the same time, I'm worried about my voice in the writing.  The thing is, everyone always tells me that I have a good voice--that's one of the things EUOL's agent liked a lot.  My voice.  But I can't actually see that.  I'm writing a new character, and I start to wonder if he even feels like a real character, and if he's got as good a voice as my others, and . . . on and on.  So I'm not thinking of stopping writing, but I'm sick of worrying about it.

Hmm . . . Well, I had hoped venting about it on a public forum would help me feel better, but it really hasn't.  Oh well.  I guess I'll just keep writing it and see what Writing Group thinks about it next week.  Thanks for letting me vent.

[MsFish]

For me, voice is something that evolves through revision.  When I start a story, my voice is usually inconsistent.  It isn't until later in the book that I get to know the character sufficiently to actually have a strong voice.  Then I go back and fix the beginning in post to match.  Don't know if that helps.  

Most of the problem I'm having with my fairy tale is a similiar thing, though.  My strength is character.  That's what carries my books.  But I'm having a problem with the minor characters--I'm writing a first person point of view character that doesn't notice much about what other people are going through.  She's self-centered, which makes for an interesting character arch, but is killing my characterization of my minor characters.  So I think--why am I bothering writing a story where I can't do characterization well, when that's the thing I *do*?  

Why are even my strengths weaknesses?  Doesn't seem very fair to me.