Book 2 (of 4) of the novel is rewritten. It's pretty much downhill from here. But it's such a fucking drag. Adding it up - this fucking story was a 20,000 word script, then another 20,000 word script, then a 25,000 word graphic novel script, then a 225,000 word novel that I edited down to a 176,000 word novel that I have since rewritten 48,000 words of. They told me to cut it down by half. So far I've been able to re-use about 5,000 words. When I'm done, it will be about 83,000 or 84,000 words. That's about 7,000 words longer than the first Harry Potter... beyond that I'm not sure because my word count site is defunct. In order to get to that 83,000 words I'll have written over 300,000 words. I will have effectively written A Game Of Thrones worth of prose in order to end up with a tight, skinny little book. And I'm so fucking sick of it. I guess that's when you know you're done - all the joy has been sucked out of it and you're left with a rote retelling of the same fucking story from another goddamn perspective because each time you change something you change something else so pretty much every scene in this tale has been told by every major access character at least once and I'm at that James Gandolfini in True Romance stage where I'm doing it just to watch their fuckin' expressions change.
Why not just change the plan and do something that'll be interesting again?
- An option got it started in the first place. I bought my wife's wedding ring with the money. - Then the script was shopped by William Morris. - Then it was backed by three different comic book companies. - Then a NYT bestselling author told me to write it. - Then a boutique agency from hell backed it and found me an editor. - Then an editor so dope he's got a wikipedia page gave me notes on it. Yeah, I could write something else. But if I want to SELL something? It's this piece of shit.
Sometimes it's hard to walk away from a project that you have already poured that much work into. It's like the sunk costs fallacy, except not a fallacy really, just wanting to see the results of your labor. Even if it requires more labor before you get to see them. Even at work, when I have been put on awful, backbreaking projects with insane deadlines, and then just before the deadline (a day or two) they have said, "Oh, you won't get done in time, just suspend the project," or "Oh, this is going on with our partners, suspend it," and so on, I have found that experience incredibly frustrating. From the day I received the project until the day it was put on hold I worked very hard to provide valuable work, feedback, and results. Even when suspending the test means I don't have to kill myself at work for the next 24 hours, it's frustrating to pour everything I've given my all to already down the drain.
Hollywood is the only place in the world where you can die of encouragement. - Pauline Kael It's very common to get lots of encouragement from people who have no stakes in your success. Listen to them at your peril because they don't have any ability to shape your success or failure. For the record - if there weren't thousands of dollars backing this project I would have bailed on it long ago. I am absolutely 100% in the catbird seat on this one - people who absolutely know - and who have zero reason to shine me on - have told me to do it because it'll be worth my time. That does not mean I'm enjoying it.
In a similar vein, I have noticed people love to tell you what you should do with your life to make yourself feel fulfilled. I have also noticed that, suspiciously, what they tell you often has very little to do with you or what you like, but lots about them and what they want to do. Now when someone tells me what path I should choose (like: buy a house!; go to law school!; move to Seattle and start a PR firm with me and my buddies!) I think to myself, they are telling you something about themselves, albeit in a very poorly worded way. I have also concluded that when someone says, "You care too much about what other people think," what they really mean is "I want you to stop caring about this thing but I have no legitimate argument for why you shouldn't." Usually, that someone is trying to convince you to do something that you have reasonable objections to - but they don't want to care about your objections. Simultaneously, they have no real grounds for why your objections aren't valid, other than that they personally do not care about them. A couple people in relatively quick temporal succession tried that line on me. After a lot of thought, that is my conclusion - that, and it's a really fucking manipulative thing to say. It's very common to get lots of encouragement from people who have no stakes in your success.