Write On! :: how many stories (novels or shorts) have you abandoned?

That's very disheartening. First off, here I am writing this novel that's supposed to be a trilogy and you tell me that the whole thing is gonna suck?? Ahh, well. Such is life. I like that you said this though, it puts some things into perspective. I'll be certain not to not to get my hopes up too high. Take care...

Please don't take it that way... The intent was to point out that, like everything else, your first try usually isn't your best - practice is needed to do well. So don't get hung up on it - enjoy the writing. After all, that's what writers do, right?
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Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

So this argues for hopping over to nanowrimo.com and signing up to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November (that's National Novel Writing Month). Just to get the sucky one out of your system, to clear the decks for the good one you know you've been sitting on.

Exploring dark places since last Thursday

Thanks for the link. It is as good a goal as any. I will keep you posted.

Have no idea what it will be yet.

[ Parent ]

Although a number of points you make in this story are identical to those made in response to one of my diary entries, I'll try not to take this all personally. :/

By the way, I'm just curious: you mentioned having abandoned two novels. How many have you completed?
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You're back into the bog.

Your diary is actually what got me thinking about this subject. I certainly didn't mean to have it seem directed at you! Consider yourself the inspiration, not the target :-)

I have abandoned two novels, and am working on the third - this one I will complete, because I'm pretty happy with it. So I haven't completed any novels yet. (This is the novel whose first chapter I've posted on my personal site.) I didn't start writing anything I actually liked a week later until grade 12, when I started my current novel.

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Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

i disagree completely. if you are a bad writer you'll never get any good no matter how hard you try. you can stand on your head from today till never again and it all wont help you at all. you got to be gifted to write well and successfully. and to be read well, you need to be a good businessman, in addition. as is, there are plenty of bad writers on the loose. so i think if you have those 500,000 bad words inside - keep them to yourself, don't spit them out. don't waste your spitle, and time on fruitless efforts to become great, if you were meant to be great you would have been, and since you aren't, you weren't. and anyway there are enough novels and books already all the libraries are full, so why write more, have mostly people already read everything in existance? for not talented writers, writing is an escape from their true talents. even if your true talent is something stupid like doing push ups, imagine how much you lose by writing instead of doing push ups! I am afraid to imagine what would happen if every person would start spitting out those 500,000 bad words... imagine, no cars on the streets, all offices are empty, every one is writing.
on the other hand writing can be lots of fun, and you never really know for sure if you aren't a latent writer or literature sausage-mill.

"don't waste your spitle, and time on fruitless efforts to become great, if you were meant to be great you would have been, and since you aren't, you weren't."

First of all, no effort to become great is fruitless. Mediocrity happens by default -- that some people choose to give up without having tried is nothing to admire. To not write a novel -- or, in fact, do anything -- because you think it might not be great, or it's been done before, or others might not approve, is not noble self-restraint, but just plain old fear.

There's not a writer on earth who hasn't been accused by someone of wasting their time or their talent with writing, regardless of their subject matter or talent. We're pretty used to hearing it. But the truth is, if it's in you, nothing anyone else has to say makes any difference.

And I can guarantee you that no one who ever did anything great or memorable ever decided, early on, "Well, if I was going to be great, I would have been great before I started, but since I wasn't, I'm not, so I won't try." That's complete nonsense.

I also believe discipline is more important than talent. A talented chess player will not become a Grand Master unless he's willing to lose a few games and learn from his mistakes. A natural athlete is not going to win the Super Bowl unless he learns how to play the game. Great writers are not born that way. You can be born with talent, but it takes dedication and practice to hone that talent into something useful.

Anyway. I hope you're just trolling and not merely a discouraged writer, because you sound very sad and bitter, and I think that's too bad.

I will say, however, that I find the irony of a poorly-spelled rant full of run-on sentences and no punctuation telling bad writers to "keep it to themselves" very amusing.
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You're back into the bog.
[ Parent ]

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how many stories (novels or shorts) have you abandoned?

none, I never abandon my babies	7 votes - 9 %
none, I'm working on my first story	19 votes - 24 %
1-2	9 votes - 11 %
3-5	13 votes - 16 %
6-9	6 votes - 7 %
10+	4 votes - 5 %
All of them	7 votes - 9 %
I lost count, but not all of them	12 votes - 15 %

77 Total Votes