After a year or so of not looking at my finished teen manuscript, I finally decided to pick it up and read it last month. I got about 3/4 through and couldn't finish it. I hated it! The romantic scenes made me cringe and the characters were flat. It just didn't read well. I felt like I'd picked up a stranger's amateur novel. I was incredibly disappointed in my work. I wrote this book for about six years, and there I was, hoping no one (aside from my sister) would ever read it.
I think I know what the problems are. Firstly, I have grown a lot and worked hard to make my writing better, so I can understand why something I started writing six years ago seems so terrible now. Secondly, I've come to realize that it was a story I didn't really want to tell. My passion lies in fantasy, but this story was a realistic story. I know now that I was forcing myself to write a story I didn't really care about.
The majority of the books I read are fantasy: Harry Potter, The Shifter's Series, The Hunger Games... the list goes on and on. So you see, it didn't make sense for me to write a book about a subject I usually don't read myself.
However, I'm in the third chapter of my new fantasy book, an adult series, about two people with extraordinary talents. I'm very excited about it! It's a story that's been in my head and dreams for a very long time now, and it's exciting to get the characters onto paper.
I'm also taking a different path in the actual writing process. My last book was all about getting the words onto paper and editing them later, but this was messy and I don't think it was a process that worked for me. This time, every time I sit down to write, I reread and edit the last day's work before I begin the next chapter. It's a slower process, but the manuscript reads clean and looks polished.
In other news, I was rooting around some of my old writing binders and found two complete handwritten novels that I wrote from around age 12-15. I'd forgotten all about them! Maybe someday I'll revisit them.
Till next time!
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