What you do when your book has lost its soul

Sadly, this happens all too often to us writers. We work on a book for too long and then we forget all the reasons that we liked the book in the first place. We begin to wonder if we should just move on to something else or if that will prove that we are lame and can never finish anything.

Some of my thoughts on why books lose their souls:

1. You writer have listened to too many people’s opinions on what the book needs to be fixed. A writer’s group is great, but don’t write by committee. Don’t take a book back to a group again and again. People lose their perspective and start to want to take over your book.

2. You are trying to write to the market. You’ve gone to conferences and you’ve heard editors and agents talk about what is hot, what they are looking for. And suddenly you think, hey, I can work that into my book. Bad plan. This is a recipe for confused writing and losing soul. It’s why I tell people all the time to remember that most agents and editors don’t know what they want until they see it. You’ve got to drive the market, not cater to it.

3. You have changed in the years since you first started writing this book. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a reality. You may simply need to move onto another project that fits who you are now. It’s one of the reasons I think it’s a good idea to get a draft written in a year or so. If you take longer than that, you may never get back to what you loved in the book.

Fine, so now the book is totally a disaster. Is there anything you can do to fix it? Possibly. My recommendations here:

1. Wait a year, possibly more before you go back to it.

2. Write another book in the meantime. See if you like this book better. You might never look back again.

3. Try outlining.

4. Read through the manuscript. Then open a completely new document and rewrite every word from scratch. If you have to retype it, you’re not going to type in anything that isn’t working. I hope.

And of course, as always, your mileage may vary.