Letting Go

I recently read an e-newsletter that mentioned Barbara Sher and how scanners (with a double N not M) operate. I've not read any of her books (yet!) but what I read in the e-newsletter gave me something to think about.

Scanners basically work at something until they've derived what they needed from it and then they move onto the next thing. This can result in a lot of unfinished projects.

I believe this is what happened to me and what I thought was my stalled novel.

I'm not sure that I'm a scanner because I actually LIKE finishing what I start, but I have come to the conclusion that when I wrote the eight or nine versions of my unfinished novel (and some of those versions include almost half a novel's worth of scenes) I worked through "stuff" and got what I needed to from my writing.

This novel was started when I was sick in hospital back around Christmas 2003. After years of not writing from late secondary school through university, all I wanted to do in hospital, while sitting in the bed swallowing antibiotics and breathing through an oxygen mask, was write. And I wrote page after page after page. I don't know where the words came from - all I know was that I had this urgent desire to write from my heart, just pour everything inside me onto the page.

But each version, no matter how much I loved it, came to a halt at different stages. Some, not long after I'd begun the story; others when I was about half way through. The desire to keep writing just wasn't there any more. Interestingly, they all died after writing a scene that demanded more of me emotionally than the preceding ones.

Now, I know that getting from start to finish of a novel is hard and that a lot of writers are more heavily invested in the beginning of their novels than the end and have a hard time finishing them, but the thing is I HAVE finished a novel, a gothic novel I wrote for GothNoWriMo 2008. I didn't lose the love for it. It was hard work, but I got from start to finish and I've even started the preliminary planning for a sequel.

So this is why I have to give serious thought to letting go of the stalled novel. Let it rest in peace. Its purpose in my life has been fulfilled many, many times over. I have written scenes that bring me to tears when I read them, I have scenes that make me laugh, I have scenes that make the romantic in me sigh and swoon.

Having reached this decision, I now feel a sense of freedom and maybe even relief. My words have not been wasted and I still love the two characters I created and who went through so many transformations, and I still love the story idea that was to help me unstall the stalled novel... but I don't need to force anything to come of the scenes, or the characters or the idea. I can let them go.

Maybe sometime in the future the Muse and I will be called back to them again, but right now I have the freedom to start new projects and revise and polish the finished ones.


Have you ever started a writing project you could never finish, no matter how hard you tried? I'd love to hear your story!