Different kinds of Giving Up on Novels

[Higgins]

There seem to be at least a few different states in which a novel can be in once its author "gives up" on it:

1) Gone without a trace except for memories of how bad it was
2) trunked more or less for good
3) semi-trunked, but may have some things from it recycled
4) set aside, but may get reworked
5) sent out for publishing, but didn't get published, but may get reworked

So being "giving up" may be just a stage in getting published or revised. Personally, I'd rather just start something new and get a new angle and use whatever still seems worthwhile from novels in various states of having been set aside or given up on, but maybe that's because for me a narrative scheme is sort of like a character or a plot element; it has to seem "alive" (full of some sort of indefinite potential) for me to want to use it (which means I suppose that for me the current novel is only an mutually transcendent aspect of a narrative scheme and neither one quite "realizes" the other).

Mutally transcendental: sets of things that provide grounds for each other, such as theory and observation in the Sciences. Each is the basis of the other and without one the other doesn't work. You can't have fictional observations of gravity without a fictional theory of gravitation. So
when a novel loses credibility, so does its narrative scheme and vice-versa. So once one or the other happens, then I try something that is definitely not a matter of rewriting or revising.

(edited to explain)

[Shadow_Ferret]

(which means I suppose that for me the current novel is only an mutually transcendent aspect of a narrative scheme and neither one quite "realizes" the other).

Wha? :Shrug:

[sassandgroove]

Wha? :Shrug:I dont' get it either.

Sokal, I think you are correct in the stages of noveldom, though.

[Higgins]

I dont' get it either.

Sokal, I think you are correct in the stages of noveldom, though.

Sorry...put in more explanatory verbiage. Not essential to the stages, but explains why I don't have such stages very much.

[SeanDSchaffer]

It's all right, Sokal. I'm sure that a number of us have not had adequate caffeine yet this morning. I know I am one of them, and I can barely understand anything right now.

My first novel falls into your first category. My first printed novel falls into your fifth category. If I remember correctly, Wyverinia Chronicle was my third finished work. Of course, many here know what happened to that book. But I still have not quite given up on it yet. I am presently in the process of debating whether or not to re-work the manuscript and make it publishable by a major house.

But I am still in the debating stage on that book. I have plenty of other ideas that could really make a bigger splash in the business than WC ever could....at least in its present form.


Now, I am off to drink more coffee!

:e2coffee:

[Shadow_Ferret]

All my novels, completed, partially completed, and in the beginning stages all fall under the auspices of #4. Since I can only work on one novel actively at a time (or rather, I think it's more efficient for me to work that way) any novel that isn't in the active que is "set aside, and WILL get worked on later."

I have never given up on any novel or idea. I've just had more pressing and needy ones confront me for attention.

[sunandshadow]

I'm anti-transcendentalist myself. I believe that whether an idea seems alive is all in your mind, and an idea which seems deasd to you might seem alive to someone else and vice versa. More importantly, a novel is not really one big idea, it's a bunch of little ideas knotted together. From a constructionist/structuralist point of view the writer is a designer and the novel is like a machine, if it doesn't work you probably have the parts connected wrong, or the wrong parts altogether, the answer is to analyze what's going wrong and redesign.