Do you ever work on things that come to nothing?

[Will]

Does that ever happen to you? It's quite depressing when it does. Some days you're working away, typing/writing, with great ideas in mind. The next week you just get a feeling like "nah, this is all wrong". Not ideal.

 

[BeigePalladin]

All the time, but then thats life; I doubt theres anyone who can say every decision they've made and everything they've worked on was correct and came to full completion etc

 

[ThinkerX]

I've written hundreds of fragments down through the decades which did not go anywhere. Some are short, crude scenes of just a couple hundred words; others are semi-polished near novels.

 

[Helleaven]

Yeap happens to me so often. On the other hand, you can turn it into your advantage. Take the parts which you like and write them into somewhere to use later. For example, you write a few pages but in the end it has not become the result you dreamt of. Not all of it could be bad. There would be some sentences, some metaphors, some clever word games which you like seperately.

Note them to use them later. I did that a few times; 10 pages go to waste bin, but a few parts of them still remains in a document for future use. At least, that's what I do when it is a complete waste of time.

 

[SlimShady]

All the time. But, I typically find myself reusing some stuff in different stories. At least something is usually salvageable.

 

[Eeirail]

It is just the cycke of creation, yes it hurts, but it helps.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Yep, it's just part of creation. I've probably thrown out 50,000+ words' worth of prose from my NIP (not including rewriting, just straight-up chapters that didn't work).

One piece of advice I read a long time ago was, when writing, to write each thing in ten different ways, to make sure you've found the best possible way to say it. (Or at least, to improve the chances that you've written something good.) This means that you'd be throwing away 90% of what you wrote, and keeping only the best 10%. It's time-consuming, but good advice.

 

[Ophiucha]

Sure, though I do often recycle ideas or worldbuilding aspects from them for later works, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. The worst things for me are the ideas and stories that are totally workable, but... something in the way I write or work just doesn't make me and my story compatible. I have certain writing techniques and favour certain sorts of description, and sometimes I have ideas for a story that just don't work with how I write. That sucks, because I don't want to just salvage it for parts when it's a damn good idea on its own, but at the same time, it's just going to sit there forever, unwritten.

 

[ethgania]

Definitely.
My main problem is that I'll try and write something other than my main world that I've been working on for who-knows-how-long and then somehow it gets sucked in to my other work... then I get frustrated and either toss it or put it on my already over-crowded backburner!

 

[Claire]

Oh yes, definitely. But they have all been good learning experiences, and like others, I've taken ideas from them and brought them forward into my current piece.

 

[Flemming Hansen]

I try to stick with whatever project I'm working on. Bitter experience has tought me that's the way to go, otherwise it will amount to nothing. It's easy getting great ideas; but it's much harder to see them through. As I see it, it's a hurdle you'll have to pass before your project ascend to another level, and working on it becomes a bit of an addiction.

 

[Butterfly]

Nothing that you write is ever a waste of time. Even if it goes nowhere you are still learning what works, what doesn't, the nuances of sentence creation and flow and all that other grammar stuff. At the very least it means you are writing and getting your imagination trained and ready for when that bit you need comes to you.

 

[Penpilot]

First novel 270 thousand words, three years, three rewrites, and it's pages and pages of complete toilet paper. The result may be worth nothing, but the effort and experience in doing it was worth everything. What I learned from just writing it and falling on my face, I could fill volumes with.

 

[coolstoneman]

I agree with so many things people have said here. I have had plenty of my own scraps of brilliance that fill my wastebasket. And it's very true that they weren't total wastes of time. They were valuable learning experiences, practice sessions while learning the craft.

One thing I like to keep are some great characters that I've discovered in these worlds. I keep them locked away in the vault, ready to pull them out when I find the right project for them.

 

[The Dark One]

Does that ever happen to you? It's quite depressing when it does. Some days you're working away, typing/writing, with great ideas in mind. The next week you just get a feeling like "nah, this is all wrong". Not ideal.

If it only took a week then I'd say you're exhibiting good judgment. I don't know how many times in the past I would write myself into a situation where I knew, deep down, it wasn't working, but because it had started so well I would persist until I had created a directionless piece of garbage that could put me off writing for months.

These days it never happens (in any serious way) because I have developed my way of working so completely. I always start with general ideas which gradually turn into a story map. Once I have the map, I can't go too far wrong, and always know quickly if I'm starting to wander from the spine of the story. Every scene must get from A to B and achieve certain things along the way.

The only place to seriously lose your way with this method is at the mapping point but that's where you're supposed to be experimenting with possibilities. Nothing is wasted - the words you reject are evidence of your improving judgment for finding a plot that works.

 

[Robert Donnell]

I agree with penpilot, it is the journey not the destination. I become a better writer along the way.

 

[Saigonnus]

Yeap happens to me so often. On the other hand, you can turn it into your advantage. Take the parts which you like and write them into somewhere to use later. For example, you write a few pages but in the end it has not become the result you dreamt of. Not all of it could be bad. There would be some sentences, some metaphors, some clever word games which you like seperately.

Note them to use them later. I did that a few times; 10 pages go to waste bin, but a few parts of them still remains in a document for future use. At least, that's what I do when it is a complete waste of time.

I do much the same. If I have an idea or concept (or even dreams) for something I THINK will be a good story, I write it down in my "concepts" file and add as much detail to the idea as possible. I write it out as far as humanly possible, even if it's only a few pages because I hope it will be of some use later with another project. You never know what could be useful and I have used a couple things from my concepts file in other works in progress to some success.

 

[Helen]

Does that ever happen to you? It's quite depressing when it does. Some days you're working away, typing/writing, with great ideas in mind. The next week you just get a feeling like "nah, this is all wrong". Not ideal.

Only ALL THE TIME.

Which is why I outline.

Much easier to throw away an outline (or come back to it later) than 50 pages of unfinished manuscript.

 

[Bear]

There was this one story. I planned it to be a short story of about 40 pages or so. The premise was about a cosmic bounty hunter that came to earth to find an escaped prisoner that was feeding off of the life energy from dead bodies at a funeral home. I wrote the opening paragraph then stopped.

 

[SeverinR]

I never have a failure.
I have an idea, write it, then another idea will replace it, and the lesser work goes on a back burner, the frige, or even out into the garage. I have yet to say even my stupid writings from childhood are nothing.

First, you need to get in the mindset, that nothing written is a failure. It might not be an award winning novel, but everything you work on seriously will help you on the next work. Maybe the story will be the history of a future novel, or use ideas from the work to make a new better work.

second, Writing for money will guarantee many failures, while writing for the enjoyment will guarantee many victories.

Set aside the piece that "is nothing", to work on something else. Maybe you will come back to it with fresh ideas, maybe it will be doomed to eternal neglect.
What you wrote yesterday will make you a better writer tomorrow.