When To Abandon A Work In Progress

As writers, we sometimes pour days, weeks, months, maybe even years into a single work-in-progress novel and it just isn't working. 

How can you know when it's time to hide it away from sight and stop returning to it? When can you move on and work on something else?

While abandoning a work in progress may be one of the hardest decisions for you to make as a writer there are a few reasons why this option may be the best one for you.

Lack of Passion 

When you first started with your novel idea it was all you could think about, talk about, or even dream about, but as time moved on it sort of lost its appeal and you find yourself dreading the thought of working on your novel. 

While most of the time it's better to power through these feelings and see your novel through to the end, if you would rather go and get a root canal than work on your novel, then maybe it's time to shelve the project for a later date. 

Writing isn't always fun and sometimes we would rather do anything else in the world than put our butts in front of our computers to write, but at the end of the day, we know we have to. 

If you can't bring yourself to work on your project then don't. 

If you hate writing it, your readers are going to hate it just as much. 

For Your Mental Well-Being

Sometimes the stories we want to tell are more than we can handle. 

This isn't a sign of weakness. 

Putting something down on the page can feel like a healing exercise, but there comes a time when something is just too much for us to shoulder. 

If you are writing a book and it is harming you emotionally or disrupting your mental health then it's ok to place it back on the shelf and leave it for a time that you can work on it more, or leave it there. 

It Just Isn't Right 

Sometimes we have these amazing ideas for a novel that seems like they are a fully fleshed-out novel, but when we actually sit down to write them we have nothing more than a chapter or two at most before we run out of story to write. 

While brainstorming sessions could help you fix these bumps and issues, sometimes an idea just doesn't have enough plot to stand on to turn it into the story we thought it would be. 

Tuck it away in a special place for another day. These types of projects are ones that you can always come back to as you never know when you'll have that shower thought that will bring the rest of the story to life. 

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The real lesson in the post is that you can always move on from whatever you are writing (unless you are contractually obligated to finish it.) 

If you're just not feeling a story or it's damaging you to write it or you don't have much of a story to write you can always move these projects aside for another day.

Never delete something you've written even if you think the story has no importance. Tuck it into a folder, label it whatever you want, but never throw it away. 

You never know when these little bits will come back to you either to finish or to take bits and pieces and give them new lives in other stories. 

Best of luck. 

With love, 

B. xo xo

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This story was originally posted on Medium.

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