Never Kill Your Child — or Bury Your Past
Recently a writer on one of my loops asked when he should kill a story or novel. His novel, after all, had been relentlessly rejected, often by agents with varying criticisms. The verdict was in and it was unanimous: the thing was a turkey that could not be sold. Shouldn’t it therefore be put to rest?
His question struck a nerve with me. Similar to many writers, I’ve written some real stinkers, wretched, amateurish deformities that beg to be put out of their misery. After all, they shoot horses, don’t they? Wouldn’t lighting a match or hitting the delete button be an act of kindness? Looked at another way, who wants his most embarrassing, amateurish works polluting his hard drive and filing cabinet, perhaps even threatening his future? Imagine some future scholar discovering them before or after your death and using them to “revise” your literary reputation.
The horror, the horror!
What follows are three reasons not to inter the rotten fruit of your brain, the mawkish and misshapen music of your muse, the putrid and putrescent purple prose (like this) of your psyche:
1. You can learn from that piece of dreck. Yes, that’s right. Years later you can take it out and learn from your mistakes, whether it’s ludicrously inept writing, plot inconsistencies, or inadequate characterization. You can also develop more of a comprehensive overview of your writing career, both of where you’ve been and of how far you’ve come. And that may enable you to chart a better creative course in the future, one in which you avoid such earlier disasters.
2. If you keep that story or novel around, you can revise and polish it, perhaps sell it to a lucrative market. Think about it: is any story so bad that no part of it can ever be salvaged? Even if it fills you with shame, there still might be an idea or passage, the germ of another story or novel that can spring like a phoenix from its ashes. If necessary, consider that story to be a collection of random reflections you once scribbled in a notebook and which could be the fodder, the spark, for future stories.
3. Last, no matter how much it stinks, that story is a part of you. In a way, it’s your child. Wouldn’t it be a crime, even a sin to murder it? That story is a product of your past, a facet of your identity, however ill-executed it might be. As Aldous Huxley said, “A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.” In addition, a bad book, when placed against a good one, can serve as a marker of how far you’ve come, how much you’ve conquered and transcended your deficiencies. And that, my friends, is inspiring, a cause for celebration and optimism.True, a bad book or story can be an embarrassment. It can strip away our pretenses and smug belief in our greatness, and expose us for the frauds we are, not only to ourselves but to those who praise and admire our work. A bad story or book can remind us that even our masterpieces are built on quicksand, and that our most monumental achievements owe a debt to failure and immaturity. When you think of it, maybe a dose of painful, character-building humility is yet another reason to preserve and acknowledge our failures, especially if we deserve it.
Related posts:
- Hickory Nuts and Bones - the Past Comes to Life
- Word Up, Word Out
- THOMAS SULLIVAN: FIVE SENSES PLUS OR “WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID, GOD?”
- A Wretched Lot Of Old Shriveled Creatures
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Comments
Amen. I’ve had more than one story claw its way out of the scrap heap and find its way to publication.
I’ve also (very recently) learned that SOMETIMES the agents and everyone else were wrong, and it’s timing. A very old novel of mine is about to see publication - albeit in a very edited form. Those who have read it for me are AMAZED it is unpublished…I was very close to the DELETE key. In fact, I have a folder in my story file that says “Never to see the light of day”. I try to delete nothing.
D
Great topic, and one of immensely personal interest to all writers.
In this computer age, it’s so easy to delete. (In fact, I’ve come close to demolishing two PCs in fits of depressed frustration.) I’m glad I’ve cooled off before acting out my dark fantasies of the moment.
I still have original stories I wrote by hand in junior high and high school, and, in the unlikely chance anyone cares fifty years from now, they will be an encouragement to other would-be writers of the progress you can make in learning your craft.
Right on John. Keep the buggers. If nothing else they serve as reminders and building blocks. And, as Dave says, who anointed the critics? All of our walls are papered with rejection notices. The only thing an unpublished story doesn’t have is a home.
Frank
Top-shelf advice, John. If a piece hasn’t simply been born before its time, and time will catch up to it, then it can still be used to donate stem cells. I don’t have any fully formed orphans, but I do have those chunks of a few dozen or more pages that didn’t go anywhere. They periodically yield up a character, a setting, an observation, a descriptive passage. Some bit in the old detritus may be just the thing to jump-start or enliven a new project
Thanks for the comments, folks. Glad you feel it needed to be said. And Brian, I like the part about stem cells. It only takes one viable cell sometimes, even if there’s something wrong with it.
You’re right again, John. –Janet