This was great, and I’ve had similar experiences. The first full manuscript novel draft I ever completed clocked out at 147k words. I put it on a shelf for three weeks to ferment and threw myself a celebration.
After that I took it back down to read it. It was awful. I composted the whole thing and rebooted the whole plot from scratch. Not much survived to the next draft.
People always express sympathy when I tell them this. They shouldn’t. It was such a valuable experience and made me such a better writer, but it also helped me realize precisely the stuff I wanted to write and where my strengths lay. I recommend it.
This was great, and I’ve had similar experiences. The first full manuscript novel draft I ever completed clocked out at 147k words. I put it on a shelf for three weeks to ferment and threw myself a celebration.
After that I took it back down to read it. It was awful. I composted the whole thing and rebooted the whole plot from scratch. Not much survived to the next draft.
People always express sympathy when I tell them this. They shouldn’t. It was such a valuable experience and made me such a better writer, but it also helped me realize precisely the stuff I wanted to write and where my strengths lay. I recommend it.
Ah, I’m so glad this was relatable. So many writers feel like the writing is not good and then they just stop. Instead of pushing on and writing more…