Editing, rewriting, or even abandoning your novel

By Dennis Mellersh

It’s tough work learning how to write a novel
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And it can be even more difficult to edit and rewrite passages that are not going well. But, you decide to keep writing to bring your novel to completion.

However, what can be the hardest decision for a novel writer is reaching that point in the writing when you realize that, for whatever reason, the thing just isn’t going to work, and you need to abandon it.

Such a situation is not ‘writer’s block.’

You were in a strong creative mood during the writing – you felt inspired.

And although the writing may have been difficult, you have made every effort possible to re-work your manuscript.

But it simply is not coming together. Should you now simply abandon it – let it go?

You are not alone in reaching this creative impasse
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This point in the creative process is encountered by experienced novelists as well as beginners.

Shedding some light on this are the words of Thornton Wilder, who wrote the novels The Bridge of San Luis Ray; The Eighth Day; and Heaven’s my Destination.
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Wilder was being interviewed by the Paris Review* and had just been asked by the interviewer: “Do you find that the writing of fiction is a painful and exhausting process, or do you write easily, quickly and joyously.”

Wilder answered as follows: “You see, my waste-paper basket is filled with works that went a quarter through and which turned out to be among those things that failed to engross the whole of me. And then for a while, there’s a very agonizing period of time in which I try to explore whether the work I’ve rejected cannot be reoriented in such a way as to absorb me. The decision to abandon it is hard.”
Wilder on another occasion made this point even more succinctly:

“An incinerator is a writer’s best friend.”

* Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, The Viking Press, 1959, New York