As I near the end of a first draft on my first novel, I can’t help but look back over all my other failed attempts.
There was the vampire novel, which I started writing 12 or 13 years ago, in my early 20’s. I got to about 30k words before Twilight gained popularity, and I got discouraged thinking ‘vampires are overdone now.’ Boy was I wrong…
There was the brief attempt at a fantasy novel, that I gave up on after a little over 20k words because I listened to a lecture on novel writing by Brandon Sanderson and decided I’d done everything wrong.
There was the super-hero / mutant powers novel I got to around 20k words on before I realized I had no plan and way too many characters with no over all goal and no point for the thing to even exist other than ‘cool powers’.
There was the sci fi novel I started as something for me to type on when I had nothing to do. That got to around 40k words before I was distracted by something else (what I’m currently writing) and never went back to it. It’s not terrible, and maybe I’ll try to finish it some day. But it also has the problem of no plan, no goal, and everything happening on the fly.
So! All the above goes to show that just because you fail doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again. And again, and again. It’s worth the pain that makes the tears. Eventually, you’ll find the story that wont let you stop writing it.
Don’t give up!
Jonas David 