Honoring Your Graveyard of Stories
By Kristan Hoffman | October 31, 2022 |
Spooky season is here — and what could be more horrifying or haunting to a writer than the projects that have met tragic ends?
Whether big or small, we all have a graveyard of failed work. The novels we got 10K words into, and then just lost steam on. The essay that never quite came together. The manuscript that garnered a decent number of requests from agents, yet couldn’t land an offer. The seeds of ideas that simply never managed to grow into anything more.
Some of these deaths hurt more than others. My personal cemetery includes all of them and more.
Because I am a slow writer, the most common cause of death for my writing projects is running out of momentum, interest, or relevance. Similar to tombstones marked with the years of birth and death, my hard drive is littered with files labeled “Road Trip Novel (2016 version),” then “Road Trip Novel (2018 version),” then “Road Trip Novel (2021 version),” and such, until finally I realize it is futile. No matter how many times I try to revive it, the window for this story has already closed. Maybe the headline that inspired it has become old news. Or the internal struggle I was having, and that I built a whole story around, has resolved itself. (More likely, it has been replaced by some new and more pressing anxiety, haha.) Whatever the reason, the fuel for this work has been exhausted, and my energy would be better spent moving on to the next thing. To be fair, this seems like a relatively natural and peaceful way for a story to die.
On the other hand, I’ve had to “murder” a project once or twice, after realizing that I simply wasn’t the best writer to tell it. (Jeanne Kisacky recently opened a good discussion about this right here at Writer Unboxed: “Who Are You Reading Now?”) For example, many years ago, I started a story about a bisexual Black teenager who was being bullied by a former best friend, so her mother sent her to live temporarily with a friend in Barcelona. Certain elements were drawn from my own experiences, and the heart of the story — about a girl who heals herself with the help of found family in a foreign place — still calls to me. But other aspects felt like too much of a stretch for me to write well, and were simply too important to risk getting wrong. For a while, I resisted what had to be done, but eventually I came to see it as a mercy killing, on several levels.
By far the most painful addition to my graveyard came from the manuscript that snagged me two offers of representation from top-notch agents, only to die a drawn-out, back-and-forth death on submission. I spent 3 years writing and revising that book, 3 months querying, 6 months on submission, and finally, at least 9 months in mourning for the future that it (and I) would not get to have. Does it haunt me? Absolutely. In the time since then, I have racked my brain with doubts and second guessing. Was it bad luck, bad timing, bad writing? Should I have just sucked it up and done the revise & resubmit that didn’t feel quite right? Should we have sent it to more editors? There are countless what-ifs, and I’ve done my best to make peace with each of them. But I also remind myself that if this story really did die too soon, then at least in the writing world, reincarnation is possible.
And that brings me to the secret hopeful message hidden inside this ghoulish fortune cookie of a topic: your graveyard of stories is actually a good thing.
Many people tend to view death as scary and sad — and of course, the loss of something once cherished can definitely include those feelings. But death is a natural and inevitable part of life. In fact, death fuels life. Think of a tree falling in the forest. First, that trunk can hide and shelter creatures on the ground. Then, as it decomposes, it will enrich the soil with nutrients, allowing nearby plants to grow even more healthy and vibrant. Similarly, the work that we do is never wasted, for it can always beget something new, and probably better. Don’t be afraid to “grave rob” from yourself. Dig up the best parts of those failed stories and Frankenstein them into a beautiful monster.
Also, your graveyard of stories shows that you have more than one idea in you. Whether it houses a lone tombstone or dozens, your cemetery is proof that you are writing. That you can continue to work, to imagine, to feel inspired, in spite of hardships and sorrow. So the graveyard is not something to fear. It’s something to honor.
This Halloween, please tell me a “ghost story.” What is one idea in your writer’s graveyard, and how did it get there? What do you think you can gain from it?
Originally from Houston, TX, Kristan Hoffman studied creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and later attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Now she lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati, OH, where she writes both fiction and nonfiction with a focus on feminist, multicultural stories. Her words have appeared in the New York Times, Switchback, and the Citron Review, among others. She is currently at work on a Young Adult novel. For more, please visit her website.
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Great post and on Halloween. I have had several stories that just never got past the opening pages. Some I’ve gone back to years later that I redeveloped into short stories and went on to be published. For me, it’s usually that I’m missing information about the story or a character isn’t fully there with me. Sometimes research helps to give me a path for redevelopment. Also, letting a story “age” in the drawer has value in the sense that we were just not ready at that time to write it. Happy All Hallows’ Eve, everyone!
“Also, letting a story “age” in the drawer has value in the sense that we were just not ready at that time to write it.”
Yes, sometimes the story isn’t dead, just in a coma, lol. I’ve got a few that I refuse to officially bury, because I think their time will come, haha.
What a beautiful essay! Death fuels life, is part of life; life can’t exist without it. So true …
I’m reminded of my first (terrible) manuscript that I rewrote endlessly but (luckily for my reputation) never ended up publishing. There was one scene, however, that stayed with me—given that this is Halloween, I will say that it haunted me—until, unexpectedly, it provided the seed for my debut novel QUEEN OF THE OWLS. Not even a scene. More like an image. But that one image led to a novel that was much, much better than the one in which it was originally embedded. In fact, I wrote about that experience right here, for my very first Writer Unboxed post in 2018!! https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2018/08/30/un-dead-darlings/
And, if we’re lucky, we learn something from an abandoned, unfinished, or otherwise “unsuccessful” manuscript. There might be a reason it didn’t work …
Thanks for writing this piece!
Thank you for sharing that story! How wonderful to know that something amazing grew from that one scene. <3
Excellent tie-in to today’s date, Kristan. However, I’m not scared—not for you or your future as a writer.
I like your tree metaphor. Did you know that when we were in the wholesale lumber biz, we specialized in Western Red Cedar? The heartwood of a cedar log is prized for it’s resiliency, it’s stability, and it’s resistance to decay. I was once on a tour of one of the largest sawmills in N. America, and they were showing our group their extensive replanting operation for pine. Someone asked how they ensure the stability of the cedar supply. The forestry folks all laughed. “Cedar is a weed,” the tour guide said. “We couldn’t keep the stuff down if we tried. Grows right off the stump. It’s almost a damn nuisance.”
Think of that. Resilient and versatile as a product, and laughably enduring as a species. Can’t be kept down.
You know yourself as a storyteller. You have the chops. As an outside observer, I’d say you’ve also had a very busy couple of years. Years when writing may have necessarily been demoted in importance. When the right story—the one you must tell; the one that “grows off the stump, can’t be kept down, is sure to endure—comes along, you won’t need anything or anyone else’s approval to tell it and deliver it.
When it comes to story, know that you, my friend, are a cedar.
Vaughn, I didn’t know this about cedars. Love it.
Kristan, amen to everything you said, esp. no writing is wasted. What started out as a very mathy book with combinations of ten and chicks doing geometry turned after ten years into Ten Easter Eggs, a simple read-aloud focused just on combinations with chicks doing chick things. It’s my best-selling book, over 100K sold. I couldn’t have imagined it. I joke that I’d write half of a couplet every year. All that writing adds up. Let’s keep at it. Cedars!
100K?! Amazing! No surprise, though, it sounds adorable and fun. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Vaughn. I needed a good cry in the middle of the afternoon. <3
Kristan, a great post for Halloween, but more so, something every writer can be touched by. Few of us write a novel and that’s it… Even writers of fame have manuscripts that didn’t work, that were set aside until a new idea saved them or they were considered what writers do…write, write to learn how, to enjoy the process, to find magic in the keyboard on those good “writing” days. I have no “fame” attached to my name. What I do have is persistence and the realization that “story” is part of my life. On many days, I come to it refreshed and excited. On the days when I don’t—I read. Thanks for chasing away the ghouls of Halloween. We writers join hands every day of the year.
“write, write to learn how, to enjoy the process, to find magic in the keyboard”
“On many days, I come to it refreshed and excited. On the days when I don’t—I read.”
So much wisdom, thank you! <3
The first serious grown up novel I ever wrote was a historical fantasy tome, long since put to rest, though it did garner the most glowing rejection letters I’ve ever received. Years later, still unagented and unpublished, my one foray into contemporary romance was interrupted by cancer. By the end of that journey I was such a different person I could never go back to that manuscript (I tried). Then I veered away from contemporary and historical fantasy to writing straight out historical. That genre has stuck. Even so there are historical novels, finished and not, that have wound up in my graveyard, like the one set in first century AD that spanned a setting from Asia Minor to a Britannia being gradually Romanized. But not all those dead manuscripts stayed entombed. When Easter rolls around, can we tell our resurrection stories?
“By the end of that journey I was such a different person I could never go back to that manuscript (I tried).”
Ah yes, I’ve experienced this too! Sometimes it’s not even the project that has a problem, but the fit of writer to project.
“When Easter rolls around, can we tell our resurrection stories?”
Haha, yes, brilliant!
Well, Kristan, stillborn, buried alive, or what-have-you, some stories do go the way of the dodo bird. But I have to assume that your intense academic focus on creative writing helps to explain your commitment to commercial publishing. I would think that writing programs at Carnegie Mellon and Kenyon view self-publishing as an admission of failure. But any novel that gains the interest of “two top-notch agents” can’t be without merit. Especially after all the work you put into polishing the manuscript. Bad luck, maybe, or bad timing (which is the same thing), but I don’t think the writing can be the problem. Caprice in the publishing world is the problem, and that shouldn’t keep your story from seeing the light of day. Or just serving as compost for what comes next. That just doesn’t sit well, at least with me.
I would say that Carnegie Mellon and Kenyon were fairly “agnostic” about self-publishing. For better or worse, both programs (at least during my time there) really didn’t touch on publication much at all. They were very craft-focused.
I don’t disagree that there’s an element of “caprice” in publishing — but no more or less so than in any other aspect of life, perhaps. There are so many things that are out of our control in this world, and I’ve found that focusing on what’s actually within my power and reach helps me move forward.
Before I managed to finish a couple of novels, I abandoned two of them. But the little bastards won’t die. They’re just lying down there on the slab, misshapen and amateurish but still breathing. One is science fiction, set in the present. The other is an amateur sleuth mystery. I’m quite sure either or both would be huge successes and best-sellers, but I’m daunted by the amount of body-snatching, stitching, and discarding I would have to do to make either of them stand and walk. And let’s face it: They might still be ugly.
Your analogies made me smile. :) All I can say is, don’t be afraid of ugly!
Everything…and I mean, everything…is a work in progress. If we humans will let the progress do its work. Be it writing, relationships, Life.
Hear hear! Thank you for reading and commenting. :)
Love this post. I’ve tried resuscitating a couple of coma novels but only succeeded in created zombies with flailing body parts, lurching gaits and a hunger for brains–mine.
Hahaha, well, you know, zombies can be quite trendy… (PS: I know you don’t literally mean zombie stories.)
I am struggling with this right now. I started a longer short story- I’m shootinh fot 10K, but after the first scene lost interest. I’ve gone back and forth of whether I should trunk it. Some advice is to never do that, complete the first draft, & don’t revise. Others say set it aside. I’ve tried the second scene a few times & still don’t really like it. I am torn. I don’t know what else to write.
For what it’s worth, this happens to me a lot. As for the advice side of things… every writer and every project is different, which is why there’s so much advice. If there was one thing that worked every time, we would all just learn to do it!
For me, in this situation, I will typically try one of two things:
– Brainstorm / outline. Write ABOUT the story, as opposed to trying to write the story itself. See what your ideas look like all spread out before you, and whether you’re interested in the pieces enough to put the puzzle together.
– Let it sit. As other commenters on this post have said, sometimes it’s just a matter of timing. Maybe you’re not in the right head/heart space for this project at this time. Or maybe there’s a key piece missing that will unlock the whole thing, but it hasn’t come to you yet.
Generally, I keep “active” stories on my desktop. Then, periodically, I will review what’s on my desktop and see what still moves me. If a story or essay still has life, I leave it. If it’s gone, then I drop it into a folder (the graveyard!) and move on.
For me personally, forcing my way through rarely results in a great feeling. (Unless of course the story/essay is an obligation to someone else, in which case, my feelings aren’t the primary concern!)
Oh, and as for “I don’t know what else to write” — I suspect that if you were to put this story aside, you would find some other character, theme, or image to strike your fancy and start a new one. Give yourself permission to NOT work, and you might be surprised that the next project will almost certainly come knocking on your door.
If you’re itching to start something right away, you can also look into prompts. I believe creativity is like a muscle, and working it out with writing exercises may not result in a finished product that you want to share, BUT it can strengthen you in many ways.
Thanks for this great post. If my graves had epitaphs, they would cite how much enthusiasm and optimism they had generated in me and all the wonderful things I learned trying to write them. I still have hopes that one or more will come to life again. And perhaps bring some enjoyment to a reader.
Oh, I LOVE the idea of giving each “dead” project an epitaph!
“Taught Me How to Push Through”
“Brought Joy In a Dark Time”
“Deepened My Skills in Worldbuilding”