Dec 19

The novel is dead. Long live the novel.

After much heartbreak, I’ve decided to completely rewrite the story, which means giving up every one of the painstakingly written 7000 words. Just the idea of it was so exhausting that I feel asleep during my rethink session (Note: Thinking and sleeping can look disturbingly similar) but I ended up with a much better plot before I did. This one seems to have everything the last one did not – a strong central conflict, a theme that stays much closer to my initial inspiration, and a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Now comes the hard part of beginning afresh. If I didn’t have this self-imposed writing schedule, I would find it so easy to give up, especially since there are days when there are a number of chores to be done and there’s an article for India Currents that I really should begin working on.

Luckily, the character of the heroine hasn’t changed much in this new iteration, so she continues to live in my mind. All the other characters have been scrapped, including one I really loved in the last version. I think one of the biggest temptations for a writer is to preserve the character and write the story around him or her but I think this particular one deserves a different home.