Starting Over

For 5 years I've faced the eternal question writers ask: can I edit this into something or should I just start over? Or write something new?

First I wrote short stories about my friends in college. They were funny, to me anyway. So funny and in line with my goal to be a writer I believed I could publish them. I combined them into a collection of short stories that I could sell.

They aren't topical enough, I thought. I edited them to be a flowing story. 14 different stories about 1 character over 4 years were now a novel about college.

Graduation was on the way and I was determined to make creative writing my profession. I made the book even more topical - the story of how I changed in college and found a job. How college was like finding a job. I graduated still in pursuit of being published.

I had friends edit the book and added their revisions. I went travelling for a year and took the time to do a real re-write. I remember the day I completed 300 pages after a 10-page marathon over 4 hours. I had finally finished the book. So I moved to New York to try and sell it.

I paid an editor in Brooklyn $150 to give it a look. She gave me positive and negative feedback. The issues were structural. I had something but it needed to be rewritten. Again.

Prior to arriving in the city I'd followed up with all the agents I'd emailed about my book, telling them I'd come to New York and wanted to meet in person. One agent got back to me and said I could have 15 minutes. I took the editor's advice and polished the shit out of my first 20 pages.

I brought everything to the meeting in Manhattan and stood outside the building, coaching myself on six pages of notes about my dedication and how the book could sell. 15 minutes early, I went inside.

In 15 seconds, the fast-talking, brutally honest New York agent sliced my manuscript in a million pieces. After paragraph 1, "this is boring, this is different than the first paragraph. If I'm the reader, I'm done reading." It wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't going to buy it or pick me up.

Despite his hard No, the agent kept on for a few more paragraphs. I gave him some alternative starting point suggestions. "What if you started on page 5?" He read the first 3 paragraphs from page 5 and laid the death blow on me.

"The problem is that you're such a good writer, so cleaned up, you don't have a voice. There's no authenticity. There's not enough edge." I'd edited so much that I'd cleaned the original humor of the stories into a marble floor too polished to walk across.

I brooded for an hour in a coffee shop around the corner. I punished myself and wrote down all the agents comments like I was yelling at myself. This doesn't work. Too good. No voice. Then I packed up and left New York. It was time to go home.

The next day, I started a new story with a prompt from a writing website. I wasn't editing anymore. I was the writer. The creative one. And if I let myself, I'd edit myself into oblivion. So I started over, seasoned and fresh.