To Shelf or Not to Shelf, that is the crap reference!
- CW
- Jan 12, 2016
- 2 min read
There's always that stage in writing one has to enter that is perhaps one of the most crippling: it's the self-doubt stage. When you make the mistake of reading a great book or two and think "bloody hell, my book is nowhere near as good as that."
The book is too gory; too cliche; too predicatable; too long; or maybe too short; not detailed enough; but waffles on in too many places; with characters that aren't rounded enough; but too much time is spent describing them; its unbelievable; but its not dramatic enough; too pacey; but too slow as it pauses to explain too much...
It is almost possible to think you've written a novel that only serves as a demonstration of how NOT to write in your genre. You even asked for readers to read early drafts and not a single one read the whole novel and gave feedback on it. Conclusion: shit, is it really THAT bad? Then you start getting defensive and think it can't be so awful, surely? It's not as though I am new to writing: surely I would have spotted if it was that bad?!
But now through all the lingering and meandering, avoiding working on yet another dead-end project that belongs on the "failure" pile, you begin to build up the next story in the series. You want your main character to come back and you have a much less bloody, but just as complex...maybe more complex case for him to solve. Perhaps you even prefer that story.
And that is where the dilemma comes in. Do you shelf the first novel and see that as the warm up act and get on with writing the new one? Or...do you commit to at least finishing the first one to give the second a boost? Make the second one better? But what if that works? What if the second one is much better and I go on and write that...but always at the back of my mind is that one I left on the shelf.... ...and in years to come I go back to that one on the shelf and against all sensible instinct I finish it and release it and then everyone who liked the second one denounces the first one as a shit fake...and... Maybe I should just finish editing this damn first novel and get it out there! The irony is...the novel is called "To Die For" and might damn well kill me!
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