Let go - easier said than done?

So the somewhat arrogant, argumentative, obnoxious, challenging, annoying man that makes me want to punch him in the face told me I have to let this novel go. I should finish it, obviously, but know that this one isn't going to be perfect and probably not get published. Then I should move on to the next project. (Which is already at the planning stages and involves me getting a shiny 11 inch MacBook Air - business crucial.) And I hate when a somewhat arrogant, argumentative, obnoxious, challenging, annoying man that makes me want to punch him in the face makes a fair point.

To end it quickly, just to finish it, might be the right thing to do, to send it off out into the world and see if it can fly. 

This whole thing is really stressing me out. It's taking too long. I don't have time; I don't have energy. It depresses me that I don't have time and energy. It depresses me I've still not even managed to rewrite chapter one. I've tried, sat down despite being deadly tired, only to get as far as taking out the odd "that", tighten up a sentence, remove an "and", but ripping out the second part... Not so much. But, of course, working like I have these past weeks isn't really conducive conditions for productivity. Another four weeks off and I could easily finish it.

But I think what's most problematic is that the novel as it stands, even with the first five chapters rewritten, isn't doing what I set out for it to do when I started this project. The novel lacks some of the ideas I wanted to explore - or they are there but not developed enough, not tangible enough. This is partly due to the difficulties I've had writing Morgan. Her complexities turned in to my own emotionally retarded issues and that didn't work - I tried to write the stripped version of me without any walls of defense and sarcasm. Bad idea. Way too close. So I tried to make her nothing like me, but that didn't work either as I had no connection with her and she turned into a complete weirdo. I can see her clearer now, but she's still uneven. Maybe because I don't want her to be an antagonist as that was not my intention. My mentor kept saying the reader needs to know they can dislike her, but I never meant for her to be disliked. But I think, maybe, once I change her in the first chapter she'll be nailed. Just need time and energy to dig into the first chapter and the ability to just cut out stuff if it doesn't quite work with the new take, even if I think it's really good...  

The other thing that's holding me back from ending it quickly and move along is my unwillingness to waste Jack, Morgan, Ben and Eliza on a novel where they are not used to their full potential as they were intended, where the internal (and external) conflicts and psychological dysfunction haven't been fully explored and not created a big enough bang. At least Jack and Eliza are way too awesome to allow to end up going out with a tiny "poof". And there's the sunk cost fallacy - I don't want to have spent over a year (or we are really coming up to two) on a novel and then finish it up just so I can get it done when I'm not complete happy with the end result.

Someone else, also very annoying but who I less frequently want to punch in the face, told me to just finish it and then let someone read it. Brilliant idea of course. But I can't finish it unless I'm happy with it, unless I feel all my ideas have been fully incorporated and allowed to develop and be explored. My next novel is not about this and these are not necessarily topics I want to explore again.  

It is indeed a conundrum, but perhaps if I get my promised writing days in January I can solve it. But I'm not ready to let go just yet.


P.S. Note how clean my language is! Not a single expletive. Fuck.

Words

So, after being screamed at like I'm an 8-year-old - which means in less than a week I was compared to an 8-year-old because of the book I am currently reading, for dropping my new iPhone, for buying the Spooky Sticker Book and - for not backing up my work, I have now done so. It's all safely stored in a Dropbox, on a server that will no doubt collapse and break and every word I've laboured over and every sentence I've crafted with care - gone forever. And then I'll come after you guys - you know who you are...

Exciting! I've started rewriting chapter 1. I figured the time has come to get the beginning right, to tally up with the middle (which is right) so that I can get to the end. I know what I need to do: what needs to go where, what has to change, what ideas need to be pushed further and come through stronger. Only, there are so many sweet sentences in there I don't want to take out so I'm trying to make what I'm writing fit around what I want to keep. Not sure this is going to work... I might just have to rip it all out and sacrifice my words in order for the new ones to make sense. Very difficult indeed.

I'm thinking this especially after the disagreement I had recently about my love for some of my own sentences, in which I was told I have to stop marvel over my words. But it's difficult sometime to not look back and think, wow that's a great sentence, did I really write that? Or like yesterday when I had my ego stroked in a workshop where the stuff I love most about the chapter I had shared was indeed the things they picked up as being great. Which makes me wonder: shouldn't I like my own work? I don't mean in a self-satisfied, smug way, but why would I write what I do if I didn't like it? Shouldn't the words I choose, the way I put them together, say something that feels right in my mouth, that tastes honest and real? 

Because only I can write the words that I have. Maybe they don't fit you, but to me they are pretty tasty.   (And saved in a Dropbox!)