When It Is Time to Give Up on a Piece

I recycled a novel today. Well, not the novel itself. I recycled the paper, handwritten and printed pages alike, and the note cards.

I have spent a lot of time on it. I did a lot of research. I like it. It’s a good story. I like some of the characters, or am at least sympathetic to them.

But I have not worked on it in a long time. I’m never going to finish it. I have just lost interest in it, mostly because I have gotten more interested in other things. Even if I finish it, my name is not Patterson or Koryta or Crais or Connelly or Child or Grisham, so I couldn’t get anyone to publish it. There is no reason for it to take up space in my file drawers.

Writers hate to give up on a piece. We have invested so much time and energy in it.  

In fact, not only do we hate to give up on a piece, but we try to use a piece of writing over and over, in different guises and disguises. That's the kind of recycling we prefer.

I’m all in favor of getting as much mileage out of a piece as possible. The idea of getting no use at all out of something I have worked on so long and hard is abhorrent to me as a writer, just as a vacuum is to nature, and to dogs.

There comes a time, though, when we just have to admit that, like any other relationship, it’s over, through death or divorce or neglect. That’s okay. There is no use sending good time after bad.

I do still have it on the unlimited space on my hard drive, though, and I am thinking about changing my name to Connelly Grisham Patterson.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat:

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml