Knowing When a Story’s Ready

by K.M. Weiland @ Wordplay

In December, I finished Dreamers Come, the fantasy I worked on for almost two years. Now, four months later, it’s time for me turn my eyes to the future and start writing again. That creative lobe in my brain is starting to itch, and I’m getting that restless urge to start visiting unknown worlds and invisible people. That much I know. What I don’t yet know is what it is I’m supposed to be writing.

The break between novels is always a restless, frustrating period for me. If I had my way, I’d jump from novel to novel without a pause. I’ve learned, however, that I need that hiatus of a few months to rest my brain and refuel my creative energy. I also need the time to figure out which of the stories in my head is calling my name. Inevitably, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I end up with a false start or two. I might think a story is telling me it’s ready to be written, only to sit down at the computer and find that the characters have all scattered like snickering children playing blind man’s bluff. After finishing Behold the Dawn several years ago, I outlined half of a time-traveling suspense story, only to run dry. After that, I completed the outline for a tale set during World War II and wrote (and rewrote) at least fifty pages before realizing that this story too had tricked me.

Why did this happen? Not, I believe, because either story was inherently flawed; I still hope to return to both of them someday. Instead, I think they failed because they weren’t yet ready to be written. Novelist Margaret Atwood, in an interview with Writer’s Digest, said:

You know when you’re not ready; you may be wrong about being ready, but you’re rarely wrong about being not ready. You keep trying, but you may wait a while between the tries. … I’ve had books that didn’t work out. I had to stop writing them. … It was depressing, but it wasn’t the end of the world. …sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. There’s nothing to be done but go somewhere else.

Ironically enough, Dreamers itself was once one of those walls. After finishing A Man Called Outlaw several years ago, I managed to write the first fifty pages of Dreamers before smashing into Atwood’s wall. I abandoned the story, and not until it was ready to be written, years later, did I finally break through that wall and complete the story.

For several months now, I was sure I was ready to return to the World War II story, The Rain Still Falls. Most of the hard work on it is finished-the outlining, the research. And I even thought I had it figured why it failed the first time: wrong POV. All I have to do is switch out the POVs, and everything should run smoothly. But, apparently, my optimism was a bit naïve. As much as I’d like to return to this story next, I’m starting to get those familiar flickers of doubt that usually precede the conviction that a story isn’t ready to be written. And even as The Rain Still Falls fades back into the background, another story keeps inching up on me, beckoning me, telling me that this is the story that is ready to be written next.

Only time will tell, of course, if this new story is whispering the truth. I may get fifty pages into it and realize I’ve been deluding myself. But I’ve learned to trust that gut feeling that says Stop. Something isn’t right. Occasionally, it’s hard to differentiate this feeling from the inevitable “beginning blues,” but if I just keep banging against that wall eventually I’ll get my answer: Either I’ll break through and know this story was meant to be written. Or I’ll get a splitting headache and realize I need to wait. It’s a delicate balance, and I’m still learning to read the signs early enough to avoid all that fruitless pounding.

But one thing I have learned is that it’s okay to give up on ideas sometimes. Forcing myself to continue a story that isn’t ready isn’t going to get me anything but a lousy conglomeration of half-hearted paragraphs. Recognizing when a story isn’t working isn’t the same as giving up on a story. Instead, it’s acting positively to save my time-and my sanity-in the long run.