Can you love a story too much to be able to write it?

[Devouring Wolf]

This post was something that was very difficult for me to write because its such a personal matter and here's a thanks in advance to anyone who actually manages to read through all my self-pitying melodrama.

Five years ago my life fell apart. I learned some very harsh truths that year and I channeled all my feelings of anger, betrayal, and loneliness into writing. I've been trying to write the same story ever since.

After I started it, my life continued to take turns for the worse. I gave up on living and started down a path of self-destruction. There were times when I didn't want to be alive anymore and I tried to think of things worth living for. I'd like to say I thought of my friends or family, but the truth is at the time my mind had made them enemies and I was so disconnected I didn't care for anyone. The thing that kept me alive was my story. It was something I knew I had to tell. I knew if I died it would be gone from the world. Finishing it was the goal that gave my life meaning.

For five years I have been writing and rewriting the first third of my story. Part of it is because I'm a perfectionist. This story is my masterpiece and I want it to be great. I know my first draft will be bad and that revision is what will make it shine, but when writing my masterpiece I feel self-imposed pressure to get it perfect. For me there is no "the best that I can be" there is only "the best" and "not good enough". Usually when I am writing I don't worry so much about it. I feel free to fail. But with my masterpiece I know it should be great and when its not I can't stand it.

But more than that I am afraid to finish it. My depression gets better and worse, but it never goes away. The drive to finish this story saved me from myself. If I finish it, what then? I'm terrified I'll just give up on life once the only thing I've ever felt I had to contribute to the world is complete. What if I finish it and like everything else I've accomplished, the victory feels hollow?

In five years, my passion for this story hasn't wavered. I've never felt so passionate about anything else I've tried to write before it. But this story's been through hell and back with me. Is it just too close to my heart for me to be part with it?

And if that's the case, what am I supposed to do? I want to keep writing, but this is the only story I love, more than any other. Thinking about writing anything else is hard because it pails in comparison to this. Should I just try to write a novel I just like rather than love? I wouldn't be afraid of being bad then or of finishing it, but at the same time it wouldn't be the great masterpiece I know I have in me.

 

[kennyc]

Yes, I think you can love, or be too close to a story to tell it. I've seen this more in poetry than stories, but the same is true. You have to have a certain amount of emotional separation in order to accurately tell the story in a way that it appeals to a wider audience than just yourself.

I have a few stories (and poems) that I continue to try and write and will likely continue to until I get them right. Like you I feel they are excellent stories but I just can't get them in the shape I feel they deserve so I keep trying.....and I will keep trying....

 

[Velka]

I'd suggest taking a break. Put it away in a drawer, or a folder on your computer and just let your story, and yourself, breathe for a while. Give yourself an exact date on which you can look at it again (I'd suggest at least 3 months or more). In the meantime write other things, read books you love, study the craft, read books you hate and figure out why you don't like them.

Time doesn't heal all (in my opinion), but it does give the benefit of clarity and perspective, which is hard to maintain when you have such a deep emotional and psychological investment in something. Don't give up though, it sounds like your story is something very special.

 

[Steerpike]

I used to have a similar problem. Shelved all of my stories because they weren't as perfect as I envisioned them. Finally started sending some out and sold some and that changed my outlook. Don't let "perfection" be the enemy of getting good stories out there.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Your masterpiece novel is like a good friend, a first love. It has a special place in your heart, and maybe nothing will ever be better than it. But it doesn't need to be your last. Try writing something that isn't close to your life or your struggles. In fact, try the opposite. Rather than writing a story about a past failure or a tragic event, try something about a success, a lucky turn, a journey into the unknown. i've had absolutely no success with novels that I love so far. They've failed to impress my critters time and again. They are unfinished and unpolished. They are what they are, works in progress.

But I've had a bit of success with silly stories I wrote for challenges. People liked them, asked to share them with their friends because they enjoyed them so much. Even had two published. I don't really think of that as success, but it's hard to deny they got further than my novels. It's too hard to learn on your first love. Maybe like how we aren't the best partners to our actual first loves in the romance department. We often have too much personal growing to do before we're actually ready to fully love a person, and so our first relationships often deteriorate because we're incomplete as individuals. It's too as writers, too.

Give yourself a break from that one work, not give up on it, but give yourself distance, a separation for a time, while you grow as an individual.i'm doing that right now, too. i had a novel I loved, and I thought it was nearly done, but I spent a hole year working on nothing else, and in the end, it was still problematic in too many ways to finish right now. So I moved on to another. And I asked for help, from my friends who have strengths I don't have right now. I need help organizing, plotting, and staying on track. I can handle character development, dialogue, and conflict, but I can't keep consistent with the big plot elements, I let them get out of control in complexity. So I tried to approach this novel with fresh eyes, and a cold heart. Objectively, as I can't manage right now with the other one.

Hope that helps to maybe put things into perspective.

 

[Penpilot]

I've mentioned this before, but each of us has what some call the 'Golden Idea'. It's the best thing ever, and it's a story that if told right will be the best story ever.

There are a lot of aspects to this. As Caiged Maiden mentioned, it's like our first love. It's perfect, at least we remember it that way.

We build up the idea of the story to lofty heights, and our emotions follow. The ideas make us feel a certain way and we want to share those emotions with others, because the experience is awesome.

But we also build the expectations of what that story should be on top of that. And the expectations gets so high, they're impossible to reach.

We hold onto the story so tight we smother it. We shape it this way or that and bend it in so many directions to make it just right it breaks.

This is what happened with my 'Golden Idea'. After dreaming about the story for 15 years, writing it for another three, over 4 major drafts, I walked away. It just wasn't a healthy writing relationship.

I may return some day, but for now, I'm seeing other stories. All of them I start off liking and as the relationship develops, I grow to love them.

Edit: Here's a Writing Excuses episode where they talk a little about the golden idea. Maybe you can gain something from it. Writing Excuses Season 2 Episode 33: How To Not Be Overwhelmed | Writing Excuses