Shaking Off the Rust – The Perils of Reviving Trunked Novels

My particular writing process has always involved a cooling off period between the first draft and revision. 

Sometimes that’s a good thing: I get to bask in the feeling of accomplishment from writing an entire novel instead of immediately going back to the grind, when I go back to the novel I can look at it more objectively and (if I loved the first draft) spot the inevitable weaknesses or (if I thought the first draft was crap) see the places where the manuscript does shine. But far too often when I was younger, I used this period to chase shiny new ideas and instead of a few months or a year between drafts, many years passed. Even, gulp, decades.

The end result is a kind of Darwinian process: only the strong ideas survive. Those stories that never quite gelled or have some fatal flaw never make it out of the first draft. And that’s okay.

But sometimes there’s an idea or a character that I love in one of those trunked novels that I want to save. Sometimes I lift that particular element out and re-use it in a new novel. For instance, the third novel I ever wrote back in junior high was called Mirror, rorriM, which has a suspiciously similar premise (though a wildly different story) from my most recent trilogy Otherselves.

And sometimes I decide to plunge in and try to save the entire story. That’s what I’m doing right now with an adult fantasy novel called Path of Power. I wrote the first draft in Fall 2000, revised it in 2004, tried to sell it—and failed. It’s been sitting in a trunk (okay, technically on my hard drive) ever since. 

I love the story premise: a powerless young queen hides behind a façade of frivolousness in order to hunt down the traitor on her regency council who killed her family. I reread the text and judge that the basic story is good, but it needs polishing, and there are some plot flaws and sections that need to be expanded. I think it could be a good novel. But I’ve spent the last month trying to rewrite it and am still only forty pages into it. 

It’s like a vehicle that’s been sitting out in a field for a decade. The car is still there, but it’s covered in a coating of rust and the engine does NOT want to start.

I have revived trunked novels before so it can be done. Two teenage novels of mine, Frost and Dreamfire, were written in the 1980s, trunked for years, and eventually published in 2007 and 2009 respectively. With those two, my writing had changed so much that I didn’t even try to revise the early drafts, but started fresh with a blank page and wrote it again. I kept the characters and plot parts I liked and threw out the rest wholesale.

I may yet have to do that with Path of Power. I wrote it in my thirties and the basic writing is fine, but I worry that my voice has changed. I need to reconnect with my main character, Deione, to slip back under her skin, and so far I’ve only managed to do so in fits and starts.

For now I shall just keep pushing and hope that soon the engine will turn over and the story gain its own momentum.

What are your experiences with trunked novels? Should they stay trunked? Have you tried to rescue one? Did you revise or start fresh?

Failed Novels

I’m feeling nostalgic today. According to my diary, I started writing my first novel almost exactly thirty years ago. I’ve written thirty-four novels—someday I aspire to catch up to my age! Not all of those books are published. In fact, *cough*, less than half are.  

Why so many unpublished? Most can be chalked up to learning my craft, some are from genres or subgenres that I had a yen to try but didn’t quite fit my style and so were abandoned. And then there are the ones where became distracted by a bright, shiny new idea and simply never got back to the old one.

So, for the amusement value, here are my failed novels, and some that are languishing in a trunk somewhere:

1/ Picture from the Past – On the advice of my older cousin I took some fantasy princesses and transplanted them into a romantic suspense tale. I was thirteen and a nerd. My idea of a big romance scene was “She thought he would kiss her. He did.” Enough said. Status: abandoned

2/ Ribbons Red – Can you tell I was big into alliteration? Another stab at YA romantic suspense, though I couldn’t resist putting in a few psychic bits in the rewrite. Amazingly, I actually got an offer on this one, but it was never published because I made the mistake of submitting a different, stronger novel, which they decided to take instead. I’m still quite proud of the opening hook: I was the only who cried at Vincent’s funeral. Ironic, isn’t it, that I should be the one to cry? I, who had hated Vincent since childhood and had often wished him dead. Status: abandoned

3/ Mirror, Mirror. YA fantasy with a dab of historical fiction (the main character had several reincarnated lives). My first fantasy novel and a sufferer of 'kitchen sink' syndrome. I must have rewritten this one eight times because I loved it so. Alas, it never sold. Status: abandoned and cannibalized for parts

9/ Beyond the Barrier. YA SF, dystopian. Status: abandoned, also cannibalized for parts, the best bits going into Jayne’s Keeper and my favorite character Lance transplanted into the sickly hero of Gate to Kandrith

10/ The Wallies Are Waiting. YA paranormal. Originally, the middle book between Dreamfire and Dreamline, featuring the middle sister, who didn't have any paranormal powers. What was I thinking? Status: abandoned and cannibalized for parts

12/ Missing Time: YA SF, featuring aliens and the Bermuda Triangle and so very, very cliched. Status: Abandoned, though the prologue did inspire a scene in Obsidian and Ice

13/ Shadowfall: SF, my first attempt at writing for adults. (I was 18 and so not ready.) Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful, featuring twins with reversible names who lived on opposite sides of a weird platform world. Status: abandoned

15/ Jayne’s Keeper: YA SF, or possibly New Adult, definitely dystopian. My only male first person point of view novel. Status: in the trunk, but not abandoned. Why didn't I pitch this one when Hunger Games was hot?

18/ Cross My Heart and Hope to Die. My attempt to follow up on Running on Instinct with a similar thriller. An editor liked this one, but it didn't pass Acquisitions. Status: in the trunk but not yet abandoned

19/ Finding Faerie. YA fantasy. Status: first draft, in the trunk for two decades now and may soon by abandoned

20/ Four-month Husband. Contemporary romance. My first stab at a romance novel, a la the Harlequin Presents novels my mother loved. Terrible. Status: abandoned. If I’m clever I will delete this so no one ever reads it.

21/ Besieged by Demons. SF, alternate history. My what-if-aliens-invaded-in-1210 AD novel. This one languished in a trunk for years, but will soon see the light of day due to my lovely editor Stacy Boyd. Just received the copyedits and it will be coming out this fall. Huzzah! Status: forthcoming

22/ Distant Beating of Wings. Paranormal romance featuring a telepathic heroine in a wheelchair, angels and a serial killer. My second stab at a romance is better, but still problematic as one third of the text is flashbacks to their childhood. Status: in the trunk

23/ Overdue: SF, aliens invade and a librarian saves the day. (Why, yes, I do have a library background, however did you guess?) Status: first draft, in the trunk

25/ Path of Power. Fantasy, featuring a Queen who is pretending to be simple-minded. Status: 2^nd draft, in the trunk, but closer to the top. (I also have some notes on a sequel)

28/ Where Lost Things Go. Paranormal romance (or possibly urban fantasy), based on an idea I cannibilized from Mirror, Mirror. Status: finished ad quite pleased with it, will shop around once I have more breathing room as there is also a planned sequel

29/ Ear-Wax Prince. Middle-grade fantasy. I wrote this for my son when he was deep into reading Magic Tree House and Secrets of Droon. By now of course he is a hulking teenager, and I've decided I much prefer YA. Status: first draft, near the bottom of the trunk

33/ Unscripted. Science fiction romance novella. Status: first draft, not sure if this is a direction I want to pursue

34/ Feral. YA fantasy, werewolves this time, an expansion of my published short story of the same title in Tesseracts Fifteen. Status: first draft, awaiting its turn for revision

So that’s twelve books published, three forthcoming, eight abandoned, and eleven in the trunk—some of them much dustier than others. What’s hiding in your trunk? Do you ever put the best bits of abandoned novels into later ones?