The evolution of a manuscript (MS) can be a downright nasty process. Serious though.
What starts out as an awesome beyond awesome idea can eventually turn into a great book… it’s the getting to the end that makes it a great book that is a bit nasty.
Right now, I am struggling with The Rings of Time (YA Fantasy). The world is awesome, the characters are well developed… but something is missing. It’s like it evolved without a leg or something. The harder I think on it… the more difficult it is to come up with what is missing.
This manuscript has been rewritten four times. Maybe more, but four critical times. It was one of my first completed manuscripts, so I have put it down for a while between rewrites (and written other books) but I keep coming back to this one.
WHY?!
Because it’s my first love. The script I’ve worked on the longest and feel the closest to at all times of my life.
Recently, I decided to undertake another rewriting of the beloved manuscript. I can do this, I told myself. There is a great story in there… I can find what is missing.
So I started… and then almost as soon as I started, I screeched to a halt. Do I really want to do this? Does it need it? And what if I can’t find that missing LEG? My time, my effort, my rewrite will be worthless.
And this gal don’t play with worthless.
I struggled with thinking I could move forward just being a panster and not a plotter… but realized I needed to plot a little. So I did… the leg is still missing! *headdesk*
Thought on it a few days… Tried again. SCREEEECH.
Hummm….
So, I have decided to let the evolution of this manuscript die for good. I am going to back it up on my external… put it on a cd (Rings of Time, Secrets of Mandor and the final book, unnamed) and just move on.
Most people don’t publish their first books anyway… and I think I am finally at that realization that this might be the case… for now.
Unless I get some epiphany that tells me where the leg is… I am moving on to other things.
Farewell Rings of Time, I love you… but we must part ways for a long time 
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I’m sorry. I realized about 3o pages into the first read thru of my first novel and it wasn’t worth saving. It helped that I had already started another manuscript. It was easier to let that first one go.
What makes me really sad is that I have two more completed manuscripts, both edited and queried to some extent, and I suspect neither shall ever be published. I love them dearly. I think they are fairly good. They’re ones I find hard to let go.
But I move forward, hoping “the next one” is the one. In the meantime, I just keep getting better and better.
Maybe there is a “bright” side after all.