Is it really not working, or are you mentally reading it in a funny voice?

There’s nothing quite like the high of a story that’s working.

You get into a zone and the world recedes. It seems more real than the world we’re told to believe is real. And when you finish for the day, you float a little above the mere mortals around you. You feel like you’ve been somewhere they haven’t experienced. You’ve touched something infinitely precious.

That’s when it’s working. As writer Julie Checkoway puts it, when your novel isn’t working, “it just lies there in pieces on the page, leaking vital fluids all over your desk”.

At that stage, it may seem so heartbreaking, that it’s easier just to dump the poor thing. Let it die in peace. But I’m not sure that’s always the best option.

First of all, it was conceived and once had life. I think there are few injuries that can’t be healed. Sure, it may have got into serious trouble, but it could still be worth saving.

If you dump something every time it gets into trouble, you’ll never finish anything. Most writing projects will go wrong here or there. 

Another problem with dumping a half-finished book is that it’s hard not to allow it to haunt you. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel like you failed, and it’ll affect the way you approach the next one.

Of course, it depends how far into the book you are, or how bad the problem is. If I’ve written a couple of chapters, and they’re not gelling, I reframe them as raw material, put them aside and restart from a different angle or in a slightly different way. But that’s not the same as dumping something – it’s more like a radical rework.

When you think a book isn’t working, try to distinguish whether it really, really isn’t working, or whether you just believe it isn’t, because you’re mentally reading it in a funny voice, or because you’re having a crisis of confidence that makes you cringe every time you read a word.

If it really isn’t working, try to retrace your steps. You might have gone off at a tangent, taken a wrong turn. It may feel wrong because it sags in the middle or because there isn’t enough at stake. Go back to where it was right, and work from there.

In rare cases, you may find that the main story thread just peters out. Perhaps the concerns were not large enough or the characters not interesting enough to carry us through the 90-odd thousand words of a novel.

It’s better to discover that near the beginning than when it’s finished. If you still believe in parts of the story, you may have to do major surgery on your original idea. Then reframe it as your practice run.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes, the important thing is to fight your way through to the end – and that, when you’ve finished, it works as a piece of writing.