I’m Scrapping My Book and Starting Over From Scratch

I’m shelving my rough draft and rewriting the entire book from scratch.

There goes my ‘get my book to beta readers by the 15th’ plan.

laughs, sighs, shrugs

A year ago, this would have crushed me.

Especially us new authors, we want to hold on to our stories. A book takes SO much work to come to fruition, throwing it out seems like a waste of our souls.

But opposite is true.

Author Nat Eliason says:

“Editing a first draft that should be discarded is perhaps the biggest way to waste time as a writer.”

And I agree.

So how did I realize I needed to start over? As I focused on my rough draft’s most important editst, I realized I was missing the mark:

• My protagonist seems disconnected, because her goals don’t align with the book!

• People only light up when I mention a theme that isn’t in my book

• My supporting characters seem directionless because I was trying to make them match tropes, not the underlying story

I could shove this under the rug (like I did with my first book). I could keep what I have, stretching it until it breaks, while incorporating a completely different storyline.

Or, I could do the right thing, the hard thing, and start over.

Idk what the improved rough draft will look like yet. The outlining will probably take a couple of weeks, then I’ll do a 30 day sprint for the rough draft.

I probably won’t launch this summer, like I wanted. But if it really does take 5 crappy books to write a good one, then I’m two books down now. Only three to go.

This concludes my ‘get the book beta-reader ready in 3 weeks’ series. Ot didn’t go as expected, but I have a feeling I’ll look back in a year and think, “what looked like a setback, made my success possible.”

Onward,

-Madi

PS: Thank you to the authors who have said hi to me from Substack! I want to make author friends, so if you’re an author, could you say hi? *waves awkward-friendly*