Are You Having Doubt About Your Rewriting? Me Too.

Steps on for how to rewrite your novel.

1. Put it aside for a little while.
           

2. Read it.

I have read my novel.

I want to hide it under the bed never to let it see the light of day again.

Yeah, it's bad. It's embarrassing bad.

What was I thinking?

I wanted to start the rewrite on December 1st.  What day is it?  December 15!

I hoped that it wouldn't be much I had to work on this time, but this story still doesn't have a good villain or conflict. I thought I ironed this little crease out. Apparently not.

Once again I have a few good scenes but they mean nothing if I don't have good conflict. The parts where the conflict fade or doesn't exist are silly. I knew I didn't have a strong ending but I thought it was because I needed a break from the story. I took a two months break.

I want to enter a writing contest in August called PitchWars. Can I make it?

Self doubt has settled in like a fog in my brain, with a lock. A big one, the size of my head.

So my second piece of advice: read your story and find all plot holes.

You might keep finding them but don't let it freeze you like it has me.

Now I just want to take a nap or work on my to do list for the New Year's.  Or maybe I'll go work on this novel and let it live. Maybe.....

My Adventure of Rewriting My Novel Part 1

My first piece of advice is to put it aside. 

I say for 3-6 months if you can. Yes, writers who just finished your NaNoWriMo novel of 50,000 words put your precious book baby a way for 3- 6 months. 

Congratulation! You wrote 50,000 words in a 30 days! I'm telling you don't jump right into rewrite.

Personally, I think it's a quick way to hit burnout if you jump right into rewrite after finishing the first draft.

If you think you can't stand to be away from your precious for 3-6 months try a month.

I'm working on my 4th draft (I think ) of my NaNoWriMo novel from 2016. I finished the 3rd draft in October. So I put in a way for 2 months. 

The first time was 3 months, but I didn't write 50,000 words that November. It took me 3 months to finish writing it. That was my second time to try to write the same story idea. And I tried to rewrite it that July. 

Key word here is tried.

I'm not a fast writer. 

I think I've been working on this same story idea for 3 - 4 years. I happened to like what I wrote in November of 2016.

So first thing to do is to put aside that story. My advice is to work on something else. I know it will be hard but it'll be worth it.

Next post will be about what I discovered about my novel after re-reading it after 2 months.