I was wondering what your take on how long one should let a half finished novel sit for. I started a Fantasy/Romance a year an a half ago, and I have not been able to get back to it. Due to many different reasons. But I still hear the characters talking to me, so is it too late to pick it up again?
posted
No. It isn't too late. There have been times when I have let my work sit for months. I'm not on a deadline or being paid to produce anything. It comes when it comes.
Posts: 341 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Well, when someone like me takes five years to write a novel, there are bound to be periods where it's not looked at. Though usually I'm thinking of it nearly all the time.
In my Internet Fan Fiction period, I once let something sit about halfway through for a year before going back to it. I happened to run across it online the other day. I can't see the join.
Just last week, to my great surprise, I restarted a novel I thought I'd permanently abandoned seven or eight years ago. But I'm writing it without consultation of other drafts, especially since I decided to junk what I've written, plot and many character elements. Maybe it'll just be finger exercises (easier with this new ergonomic keyboard), but I'll have to see. At my usual pace of five hundred words a day, it'll be probably two hundred days before I reach the end---probably much longer, 'cause I really don't know what's going to happen...
posted
How could it no longer be any good? You may go and reread some things that you've written and junk them-- put them in a safe place for later, but it's still good.
Posts: 341 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Yeah, writing doesn't tend to have a "shelf-life" unless it's really dated, like a book about who should win the next presidential election (or why...Blood Rayne was the worst movie ever, I mean, at least people will still care who actually got elected).
The words on the page won't have gotten any better, but they didn't get any worse either (unless some word you used a lot became an epithet between then and now...I'm full of wacky possiblities, aren't I?).
posted
Yeah, I've just got to hold this manuscript until the name "boner" comes back into respectability. Did we ever determine for sure what a 1,000,000 year time capsule should be made from?
Posts: 366 | Registered: Sep 2006
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