{"id":987,"date":"2018-08-29T07:21:37","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T11:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=987"},"modified":"2018-08-29T07:21:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T11:21:37","slug":"the-writer-who-never-gives-up-downsides-and-upsides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/29\/the-writer-who-never-gives-up-downsides-and-upsides\/","title":{"rendered":"The Writer Who Never Gives Up–Downsides and Upsides"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 21, 2018, Raina wrote, Has anyone ever had the problem where your current project isn\u2019t working, but for some reason you just can\u2019t let it go and move on to a new project, leaving you in a weird writing limbo? I had a story in the works, but recently there was a book published with the exact same plot (and I don\u2019t mean with the same general story structure; the specific premise and character goals are exactly the same, and it\u2019s a pretty unique concept, not a widely-used trope), forcing me to do a complete overhaul of my story. I\u2019ve spent the past month trying, but everything I come up with either doesn\u2019t work, or is something that is fine objectively but I just don\u2019t want to write. I know that the most logical option would be to accept the unfortunate coincidence and move on since this idea clearly isn\u2019t working (at least for now) and I have a bunch of other story ideas which I\u2019m more excited about, but some lingering stubbornness in me refuses to let go. I think it\u2019s because I\u2019ve been working on this for so long, that I\u2019ve gotten too attached to the idea and am clinging to it out of sheer stubbornness. Any suggestions\/encouragement? In this instance my problem isn\u2019t not having something to write, but rather giving up on writing it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Has this ever happened to anybody here?<\/em><\/p>\n

Melissa Mead wrote back, Maybe save it in a \u201clater\u201d folder? You\u2019re not quitting. You\u2019re just letting it sit.<\/em><\/p>\n

I agree with Melissa Mead that may be a good way to go.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve mentioned here before that it took me four-and-a-half years to write Stolen Magic<\/em>, a miserable four-and-a-half years at that. I got lost. My plot was too complicated and yet didn\u2019t really boil down to much. I wrote hundreds of pages and tossed them. I gave myself a month\u2019s vacation to gain perspective, which didn\u2019t work, either. But, like Raina, I was too stubborn to walk away and start something else. In the end, though, without realizing it, I did do something new, because the story I wound up with has very little connection with the one I meant to write.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve talked about this before, too: In economics, there\u2019s something called sunk costs. My story was a sunk cost, because I\u2019d sunk so much time into it, and if I abandoned it, that time would be lost. I didn\u2019t know the terminology then, but I knew I didn\u2019t want to give up the time.<\/p>\n

And in economics there\u2019s also opportunity costs. While I was thrashing about with Stolen Magic<\/em>, I was wasting the time I might have spent more productively in writing other stories.<\/p>\n

I held onto my sunk cost and paid the opportunity cost. (I hope no economists are reading this since I\u2019m probably expressing it all wrong–but the theory is right.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m bringing this up, because it helps us see what\u2019s going on, and economics makes the question less emotional. Our heart may be aching over the possibility of a break-up with our beloved WIP, but we lift our heads and see all the other stories that would like to woo us.<\/p>\n

We can ask ourselves what, other than sunk costs, makes the separation so hard. Is it the theme? Our MC? A secondary character? The tone? A particular plot twist? Does this story concern a problem we can\u2019t stop thinking about? I\u2019m more likely to come up with answers if I ask these questions in writing, in my notes.<\/p>\n

Once we\u2019ve figured out what we\u2019re so drawn to in our WIP, we can consider how to use that thing or things in a new story. We can make a list! With luck, soon we\u2019re off and running, with something partly old, partly new.<\/p>\n

In Raina\u2019s case, the published book and the WIP are very close, but\u2013just saying–suppose she\u2019d never read and never even heard of the other one? She would have had the satisfaction of finishing her story, and maybe, while she was writing, it would have diverged so much from the other that the resemblance became very faint.<\/p>\n

Ideas, as you may know, aren\u2019t copy protected. Only their expression is. Probably no one today would dare write a book about a boy in wizard school, but if Rip Van Winkle woke up and wrote such a book, he wouldn\u2019t be sued, and his would probably be very little like Harry Potter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bud Not Buddy<\/em>, an orphan story by Christopher Paul Curtis, which won the Newbery award in 2000, came out in the same year as my orphan story, Dave at Night<\/em>. When I met Christopher Paul Curtis, he said that if our books hadn\u2019t been published at roughly the same time, one of us would have been suing the other. I didn\u2019t think so. I certainly wouldn\u2019t have felt that he had stolen anything from me. I don\u2019t think either of us lost readers as a consequence. A result, though, was that the two books were often reviewed together, not set against each other, but in tandem.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t read much fantasy these days, and I stay away from fairy tale retellings, because I don\u2019s want to be influenced. If something comes into my head that already flowed out of someone else\u2019s typing fingers, so be it. I\u2019m innocent. I didn\u2019t get it from that other author.<\/p>\n

Raina asks for encouragement. All I have to offer is that the writing life isn\u2019t easy, but we are constantly surprised and delighted by the buried treasure our deep brains offer up to us. One project may not work out, but it\u2019s just one of many, with many more to come. Onward!<\/p>\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Write a story about a young ant in ant wizard school.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Pick one of the lost boys in Peter Pan or one of the dwarfs in \u201cSnow White\u201d and give him his own story, weaving in threads from the classic.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Eliza Dolittle of My Fair Lady<\/em>, who sells flowers in London, is almost but not quite a beggar. Write a scene from her back story that enables her to keep her dignity and self-respect.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 21, 2018, Raina wrote, Has anyone ever had the problem where your current project isn\u2019t working, but for some reason you just can\u2019t let it go and move on to a new project, leaving you in a weird writing limbo? I had a story in the works, but recently there was a book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[93],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":988,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}