You get so attached to your work – this is true in any field. But even more so in the arts. In music you spend hours and hours writing or learning something, and despite all the effort and time you put into it, not everyone is going to like it. Often no one is ever going to hear it, you just learn your lesson and move on. You have to remember you are doing this for you.
As I take more steps into writing, I find this to be especially true. My first book literally rolled out of my fingers. It still went through draft after draft but I felt good about it. I put it out there and got mostly good or at least fair comments. And overall I was pleased, I look like that fat buddha serenely happy with my first work despite its imperfections.
However my next project, Rolling for Love, has been a slew of pitfalls. My goal in this book was to listen to the feedback that I got on my first book and write a book incorporating more of that. Although I changed a lot in my first book based on beta readers, some of it just wouldn’t work for Rachel’s story.
End the end, I have a very long winded story lacking basic elements. And my beta readers have been painfully blunt about it. Painfully. So, what am I doing? I have decided to strip the book. I have taken out everything that is meaningful to me. I have chopped the anecdotes about Monty Python, the development of my side characters, the conversations I found meaningful but my beta readers are finding boring. I could feel moisture forming at the corners of my eyes as I took out the two big board games scenes. Scenes that I felt were integral to my main character’s desperate attempts to connect with reality. Maybe echoing my desperate attempts to connect my ideas with my readers emotions.
But it needs to be done and as much as I write these posts for others to read, I also write them for me. Because I need to keep two things in mind.
- I can always add things back in after I have improved my story.
- Everything I am taking out can get used again.
Because writing is a lot more like music than I thought. Writing stories is kind of like learning your scales. Once you have learned a scale (or written a paragraph) that is now a part of you. You will see the scale again, you will use it again. Maybe not the same way, maybe not in the same pattern. But it will always be with you, ready for you to rely on it.
Gutting your work feels like gutting your soul. But sometimes it just needs to be done.
