Things Certainly Do Change (A Book Update)
You would think this would be a sad post (and maybe it is, a little), but I've pretty much come to peace with my decision.
I've decided to stop rewriting The Name and the Key for publication, and simply let it remain my graduate thesis. It's time to let a finished thing be finished.
This may seem like a shock given how much I've blogged about the book (especially with all of those Fantasy Indies posts), but I have actually been thinking about this for a while. A large part of it had to do with the fact that I wasn't enjoying working on it, and often times I would get frequent writer's block on it. This is because I would be in the middle of rewriting and this feeling would wash over me where I'd ask myself, "Do I really need to do this?" And then I'd wonder if there was really any point to rewriting when the book seems done to me already.
But the thing is, the book isn't publishable as is. Due to some serious mistakes I made that I won't recount here, I realized that my book should never make it out into the world as it was written. In other words, it really shouldn't see the light of day.
Rewriting the book would fix the problem, but once I started rewriting it, the task felt more and more difficult for me. I couldn't figure out how to redo large chunks of the book, and I didn't think I wanted to. And I realize that maybe that sounds awful, given the mistakes I made with it, but there were things I did well that I didn't want to touch.
I've decided The Name and the Key is going to remain an artifact. While I'm embarrassed about the mistakes I made, I created wonderful characters, had a sweet romance, and the plot was solid. I am proud of those aspects of the book, and I feel like I can't recapture that magic in the rewrite.
The Name and the Key is just going to be a relic of my time in graduate school, an experiment in novel-writing (as it was my first time writing fiction!), and a lesson learned when it comes to the wrong decisions made writing the book.
I'm glad I caught myself and realized that my book shouldn't be published before I submitted it for publication. And I'm going to say, "Thank you The Name and the Key for teaching me to write fiction and for teaching me important lessons about what I should and shouldn't write...but your time is over." The book will remain unpublished, and I've made peace with that.
For the time being, I'm taking a break from novel-writing. This is largely because my brain needs to percolate and come up with ideas...because as of right now, I have zero concepts for a story. That scares me a little, because I've usually got something in the back of my mind, but for now...I'm just going to take a breath and let things come to me instead of forcing them.
Thanks for reading my update and please wish me luck with coming up with ideas! I could use the well wishes!