Letting Go: When Bookish Ideas Just Won't Work

I love boardgames. In fact, I love them so much that I’ve lost an entire closet of my house to them. Matt and I call it “The Game Closet,” and it’s so full that we’ve had to make some tough choices about which games to keep as new games come our way. (Risk lost that battle recently.)

One of the games that Matt and I have been playing a lot lately is called Race for the Galaxy. It’s a space-themed card game where you build tableau of cards around a particular strategy—military strength, consumer goods, settling planets, etc. (It’s a great game, because each time you play it you get different cards and so have to create a different strategy. Also, once you learn the rules, it's quick: about 30 minutes per game.)

I have a weakness when it comes to the game, though. At the beginning of it, you get a “start planet” that has certain powers and a hand of 6 cards, some of which you have to ditch and some of which you choose to keep. So you pick out a strategy, saying to yourself, “This time I’m going to be a tough military force” or “I’m going to buy all the Alien goods I can.” And then you play, trying to get cards that compliment your strategy.

Except that, sometimes, those cards seem to have gone on strike. You want those military forces, but they’re nowhere to be found; you have tons of alien planets but no consumer powers to trade their goods. And that’s where things start to fall apart for me, because at some point you have to accept that your starting strategy just isn’t working out. And you have to get a new one. I’m . . . not good at this. I tend to keep digging through the deck for the cards I think I ought to have, or hang on to cards that aren’t doing me any good because I think that will change next turn.

Which brings me around to the point of today’s post, and the difficulty of letting go of ideas that just aren’t working for a book.

Beginning a book is always a hairy process. You have to figure out who your characters are, what the world they live in is like, what their problems are. In a fantasy novel, you have to create a magic system that makes sense and, often, build a world from its history up. In short, it’s a lot of work. But, generally, I at least have a few shining ideas, the ones that caught my attention first and made me want to write this particular story. I tend to feel very fondly toward those ideas, protective even.

Except that, as I mull the idea for a book around in my head and even sometimes after I start writing it, I realize that one of my darlings, one of my cool, nifty ideas, just isn’t quite right for the book. And that’s where the trouble starts.

Usually when this happens, I balk first. Wait a minute, I say. I’m just not thinking this through. There’s a way for my original idea to exist in this novel as it’s taken shape in my head on in its first 50 pages. I just need to work it out. And so I’ll try that, brainstorming and scribbling and agonizing to try to force that shiny idea into the shape that the book has actually become.

The problem is that this strategy often doesn’t work very well. The original idea is still wonderful, but it doesn’t add to the story as it’s evolved. It's wrong somehow, or just doesn't fit in with anything else in the book. And that leads me to the time that I hate, the time that always makes me cringe inside. Because I hate the time when I have to admit to myself that some part of my original idea just doesn't work anymore, not with the book as it is now. And I have to give it up, and find something new to put in its place.

Sometimes I think it shouldn’t be as hard as it is. After all, it’s not like the idea’s dead. I can use it in another book down the line (though I always worry that I won’t.) But somehow it’s always difficult for me when I have to give that shiny idea up. I always feel a bit like a parent who was really excited at the idea of their kid becoming a ballerina, only to find out that she’s actually going to be a soccer player. You’re still love the kid, of course, and you're super excited that she's so good at soccer. But still, you always feel a little pang when you pass a ballet studio.