Never Give Up!

I have been busy doing everything yet nothing at all. I’ve been working on my WIP for several months now and have even finished the first draft of it, that is until I went to revise it.

You know what happened? I found that my structure was a bit–well, to be honest, more than a bit–off. I missed whole parts and there was a major structural shift somewhere in the middle where I lost focus on my midpoint. Somewhere I went from knowing exactly where I was going to changing in midstream to another idea that suddenly popped into my head. I mean, that happens. I happens all the time, in fact. The problem was that I didn’t adjust my outline accordingly, so when I finished the first draft, everything practically started from that moment.

I’m going to be honest. I was about to just give up. Pack it in. Drop the ball. Whatever metaphor/cliche you can think of. Really. I was so devastated by the overwhelming job of trying to fix it. To top it all off, everything I tried didn’t seem to be good enough.

So what was my problem?

I tried to fit too many plots into my prose. I had three distinct plots going simultaneously. How was I able to finish it, then? Good question. I actually wrote it several years earlier…before I published my first novel, Copper Rain. I wanted it to fit into the story. Since it was already written, I should have only had to add my main character and his companions into it. When ended up happening was that I shoehorned them in instead of letting them get flowed in naturally to the story. At first, I included only my main character and it seemed to have worked, but the original story was also in another character’s point of view. That’s where everything went wrong.

I should have never attempted to rewrite it in the main character’s POV. First and foremost. I ended up basically rewriting everything and nearly started over trying to reuse all the old stuff I could. This led to too many inconsistencies and such.

So why do I call this article “Never Give Up!”?

Because I almost did. I almost pushed back my chair, put up my keyboard and walked away from all of it. Why? What was the point? I asked myself why? Why was it so important that I even started writing in the first place. I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know why I started. I love reading. Why couldn’t I write? There is nothing I wanted than to be a published author. I had actually done it! I published my first novel. Probably the most nerve-wracking thing I had ever done, but I did it. No, it wasn’t traditionally published. I tried many times but after a dozen rejections, I saw that Amazon was offering to published for free.

So now that I’m “published” what now? Where’s my motivation? With only 32 (at the time of this writing) total books sold and only one, count it, one review, I was really beginning to doubt whether my book was good enough for the real world. What would make the next one good? It has to be good, right?

What made me come back into the fold?

I was on Twitter the other day and I saw that someone posted that they had finally given up. I felt like someone punched me in the gut, because that was what I was feeling at the time. Just seeing the actual words on the screen made me see that I really didn’t want to give it all up. I am not writing for fame and fortune. I certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to become rich and famous from writing, but that is not my intent. I have a responsibility to the characters in my head and to those who have actually read and enjoyed my novel. Since I am writing a series, I understand that some people won’t read or even pick up the first one until I have at least two or three in the series already complete.

I get it. I completely understand. I want to finish these novels so I can move on to the ones that aren’t linked to that story but to that world. There are ten worlds I have in my one world, so there are multitudes of stories that I can write.

I’m not done. Not even by a long shot. I have seen the words on Twitter and I did not like them. I don’t want to say them, even if I absolutely must. I am not giving up and, though my motivation is yet to be found, I will find a way.


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