It’s always an awesome feeling to start a new book. When that idea wakes you up at 4 a.m. and, forget sleep, you’ve just got to jot it down before you forget. When you take to the computer, open up a blank Word document and. Go. To. Town.
And then… and then… 2,000-words in, 3,000, 4,000… nothing. It all seems wrong, and flat, and cheesy and stale. That revolutionary idea you thought no one had ever seen before sounds tired and rote and generic and positively random.
So you put it away for a day, or two, or a week, or two, and pick it back up and see what happens. Sometimes it’s gold. Sometimes it becomes what I call a “Starter WIP.”
I have a lot of Starter WIPs piled up. I’d say in drawers, because that’s where I used to store my rough drafts, but nowadays they’re in dusty file folders, or unused memory sticks or on half-forgotten discs.
Some I’ll read six months from now and think, “Man, that’s actually pretty cool.” Others I’ll read six weeks from now and think, “Rusty, seriously, what were you thinking?”
But the best thing about these works in progress – and why I call them “Starter WIPs” – is that about four or five or six thousand words in, I’ll generally get THE idea.
THE idea that sticks. THE idea that works. THE idea that becomes my next completed, fine-tuned, detailed, evolved and, hopefully, published book.
That’s what happened to me recently. I got all excited about this one idea, wrote about 6,000-words of it and after awhile it all just started sounding so familiar. The chubby geek. The witchy BFF. The homeroom. The cafeteria. The love triangle.
Not that I don’t enjoy writing those things, and or think they don’t add to the whole high school experience, but I’ve read so much YA by now. Enough to know that just because it’s YA doesn’t mean you have to have lockers slamming every five minutes, or the obligatory cafeteria/gym class/student parking lot scene.
But there I was, just kind of slogging away when I started writing this one character, and she really struck me as somebody… interesting. Worth getting to know better. She was just a bit player in my Starter WIP, but then became the heroine of my next project.
And that’s the thing, when you’ve got a Starter WIP, it generally leads to the next project; and that one’s usually a keeper. So, not much else to add to that. I just hope it’s kind of reassuring to hear that all is not lost just because you start up something and then abandon it after putting a week or two’s worth of week into it.
And like I said, sometimes a few months or even years later, your Starter WIP becomes something you pick up again, enjoy writing and finish with pride. That’s what happened with Panty Raid At Zombie High. I started it, felt a little “funny” writing from a male POV when most of my other main characters were female, put it away for a few months, came back to it, really kind of enjoyed what I’d written and, boom, finished it a few months later.
That’s why I like to call them Starter WIPs; even though you’re not actively working on them, they’re still lurking around somewhere; still “in progress.” And that’s a pretty comforting thought…
Yours in YA,
Rusty
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