I’m Deleting My 46,500-Word Novel And I’ve Never Felt More Free

I told myself I needed to write my first novel by the time I turned 30. From the summers of 2020 to 2021, I achieved my goal. I wrote and completed the first round of edits on a novel that came in at just over 46,500 words. I was ready to start looking for an agent.

However, as I began pitching literary agencies and publishers, a nagging feeling started chewing at me. It took me some time to admit it, but I finally came to terms with the fact that my novel — the child I’d worked so hard to bring into this world over the course of roughly 14 months — was kind of bad.

After all that time, all those words, I realized my efforts had been in vain. I went through a kind of mini-grieving process: I buried my manuscript deep in Google Drive and tried to focus on other things. But I couldn’t.

About a month later I opened up the document again and started reading. Since then, I’ve cut more than half — 23,500 words — of my story.

I thought it would feel like murdering a dear friend, but it’s actually been incredibly freeing. I’ve been writing more than I ever have before, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and my writing style in the process.

That’s why, even though it’s technically a failure, this too-fluffy, too-vague novel is my proudest writing achievement to date.

Not only did I write more than I ever truly thought I could, I had the insight to see that manuscript for the useless contribution to fiction that it was and change it for the better. (I’m currently reducing it to a long short story, which I think will prove to be a much better read.)

What My Attempt at Novel-Writing Taught Me

Whether you want to write your first novel, or you simply want to improve your writing practice in general, here are a few things I learned throughout this process that I wish I knew sooner.

Write Your Pitch Before You Write

Whether it’s a novel or an article for a magazine you aspire to publish in, ask yourself if you can write an enticing sales pitch for your topic before you write the full piece.

One of the big eye-openers for me was when I started writing my query letters to literary agents. Generally, you want to answer the following questions in your novel’s query letter:

• What’s the genre?
• How long is it?
• Who is the main character?
• What incites the story? (What’s the hook?)
• Where does the story take place?
• Who would want to read this? (Who is your audience?)
• Why is now a good time to publish this story?

Answering these questions before you start writing will help you craft something that is not only more focused, but that also stands a better chance of getting published.

Instead, when I wrote my novel I basically wrote whatever I wanted to write with the goal of meeting a specific word count. Which brings me to my next point…

Choose The Appropriate Project Size For Your Idea

I wanted to say, “Don’t write to hit a specific word count,” but, truthfully, most writers must reach a certain number of words to be published, regardless of genre.

Rather, it’s more important to consider your topic and what project length will accomplish the following:

• Tell the full story
• Limit “fluff”

Ernest Hemingway was famously concise in his writing; his short stories especially convey impressive amounts of information in a small number of words.

To give your writing more impact, make sure that you’re not trying to make it longer than it has to be. The goal should be to keep your piece just long enough that you can say everything you need to say and leave readers wanting more.

Over-elaboration and over explaining ideas comes across as boring and shows a lack of trust in your reader. While my novel didn’t work as a novel, I do think it has potential as a short story. (But, only time will tell.)

Writing Isn’t Passion — It’s Sacrifice

I have passion for writing, but I’ve learned that’s not the same as passion writing. And I don’t want to be a passion writer. If I were, I’d never get anything finished.

I’ve learned it’s better to diligently plug away at a writing project than wait to feel truly inspired. My novel may have been a flop, but I still wrote over 46,000 words. That didn’t happen from only writing when I felt like it. Many times I felt like doing anything else. That’s where the sacrifice comes in.

To be a writer, even an unsuccessful one, you have to sacrifice a lot: your time, energy, and social life, to name a few.

Even though I wrote something I wouldn’t publish as-is, I learned that I really am a writer at heart. Only a writer, after all, would see how much needs to be sacrificed to write something that has no guarantee of being successful and want to do it anyway.

Follow The Rule of 2

If you want to improve your chances of being a successful writer, you need to grab your readers and grab them early. When I was pitching my novel, many literary agents required that submitting writers include the first two chapters of their books with their query letters.

I only had one problem: the first two chapters of my book didn’t really get into the meat of the story. (🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩)

This is a massive problem. If I couldn’t hook readers — or agents — with the first two chapters of my book, who was going to keep reading it? The same concept can be applied to other forms of writing, too.

To get readers interested and develop your story at a good pace, the inciting incident or hook of your content should occur

• in the first two chapters of a novel or nonfiction book.
• in the first two pages of a short story.
• in the first two paragraphs of a magazine article or blog post.

In the cast of this post, the inciting incident was my realization that my novel didn’t work as a novel. This happens in the second paragraph of the content and (hopefully) piqued your interest enough to get you to this point.

Above All: Don’t Let a Fear of Failure Keep You From Trying

If you skimmed this post and only take one thing away from it, please make it this.

It took me until I was 30 years old to really attempt writing a novel. I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was 18. So why didn’t I? I was scared of putting my time and energy into something that wouldn’t pan out.

However, if I had just started trying sooner, I could have failed sooner. I could have learned all these lessons and grown faster as a writer. Because I was afraid of failing, I lost out on 12 years that I could have spent developing my writing process.

Granted, I learned many other useful things during that time but, if you want to write, it’s more important that you start than that you succeed.

If it turns out you write something that fails, you’ll probably still have something interesting to write about online.