by Deren Hansen
How long should you keep pursuing a project?
When does tenacity cease to be a virtue?
How do you know when to set one project aside and invest your energy in something fresh?
During the
2011 WriteOnCon, agents on one panel mentioned projects they'd shopped for years (as in four or five) before finally making a sale.
That surprised me. My impression from comments by writers and agents is that they generally shop a project for a year or so and then, in the interest of maximizing return on effort (or because they've exhausted their list of potential editors), move on to something else. But even with a labor of love, the author needs to move on to other projects to give the agent new material to submit while continuing to shop the the first project.
Then again, I've heard a number of people characterize publishing as basically a game of persistence: if you keep showing up, you'll eventually get a turn. But no one ever specifies the kind of persistence that pays off. Do you refine and polish your master work--there are a fair number of classics that were decades in the making--or do you persist in producing new projects until you find that one that resonates?
The common answer is that it depends on you and your situation.
The common answer is neither comforting nor helpful.
If you were a rational economic actor, you would watch for the point at which the opportunity costs of not doing something else approach the sunk costs already invested in the project. Or, in colloquial terms, you'd stop when you realize you're throwing good money (or effort) after bad.
I once read about a couple who had adopted a rule of three for major expenditures. If one or both of them thought they should buy something they'd postpone the decision to see if they still thought it was a good idea. They would do this at least twice on the theory that if the idea came up three times then it probably was something they should buy.
My advice, if you're wondering whether to hold or fold a project, is similar (and not unlike the advice to let a draft cool before undertaking revisions): set the project aside for a season. If it's easy to forget, then it's time to be done. If it won't let you go, then you shouldn't let it go either.
Deren blogs at The Laws of Making.
Serious title, huh? It is a pretty important question. You've poured your soul into your manuscript. You've sweated, sacrificed, cried, and celebrated. You've written fifty drafts, put it in a drawer for a month, had a critique group and twelve beta readers look at it. You've woken up at 3AM just to fix that one sentence that was bothering you.
So you query. You write, rewrite, edit, get critiques, and rewrite it again. You send it out and sit at your computer hitting refresh on your inbox so much you break the mouse. WHY DON'T THEY GET BACK TO ME? You wonder. And when they do, you wonder HOW CAN THEY REJECT IT SO FAST? You're an emotional shipwreck.
You get some rejections and some requests for partials and fulls. You query ten agents, wait, then repeat until you've queried 100 times. In the end, the phone never rings. YOU DON'T GET THE CALL. You eat a tub of ice-cream. You cry. You call/email/DM all your writer friends who understand. (Notice I didn't say blog or tweet about it). And you want to know, WHY? Why wasn't my best good enough?
What do you do?
Do you give up?
NO. You don't. Because you know that perseverance is the key to success. That you constantly learn more, get better, grow.
Do you Throw the manuscript in the drawer and start from scratch?
Well, that depends. But the simple answer is YES. It's okay to love it. It's okay to want to publish it someday. Maybe you will. But for now you need to start a new WIP if you haven't already. Because you should always be writing and working and learning. And maybe this will be the one.
Each one is a learning experience. Each one helps you grow as a writer. Especially if you - say it with me now - WRITE WHAT SCARES YOU. To borrow a cliche, don't put all your eggs in one basket. (kind of like don't put all your werewolves in one room because they'll rip each other apart and make an awful mess, but I digress).
By: Erica Olsen,
on 2/8/2008
Blog:
Librarian Avengers
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There’s no sky today in San Francisco, just fog. Outside, buses and dogs and flowers are memory-distant.
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On top of this great advice, it's good to have a few manuscripts under your belt when you seek representation anyway. If an agent or editor is interested and they ask, "what else have you got?" then you can say, "well I've got...."
Once you've been accepted, there is more likelihood that the agent or editor will be interested in looking over what you've already written.
I like that advice....if you're still thinking about it after putting it away for a time, then it's worth it and go back to it. Great post, Deren!