Rip it up and start again.

Oh God. I have just binned my new book and started again. Goodbye 20,000 words. I’ve known for days it had to happen, maybe weeks even, if I’m honest with myself. But I’ve kept on going as if by putting more words down I would somehow write myself away from the problem.

It’s hard to tell if your intuition is right on this sort of thing. How do you know if you’re just making excuses not to get the work done? There’s always a point in the life of a book when it seems like you should throw it away, and usually you persevere and it gets there somehow.

Maureen McHugh sums it up pretty neatly in this excellent graph, The Life of a Project.

But I think also you have to know when you’re coming at something from the wrong direction. When though the The Greatest Idea You’ve Ever Had is still essentially sound, you’re expressing it in a way that (thank you, Maureen) sucks.

Those 20,000 words aren’t wasted, though. At least I bloody hope not. I think I know how I need to write this book now. FAST, ha ha. 

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