Weekly Goals 22-4-19

I think I figured out what needs to happen with the book I've been struggling to finish, and over the long weekend I made some changes that I think will make things work better and allow me to finish writing it.

So this week my goal is to chip away at those changes and keep working on finishing this story.  It's one I really want to tell, but getting it right is so very tricky.

While cleaning out a closet over the weekend I found copies of some of the first novels I ever wrote and thought it might be fun to read them now and see what they are like.  The first one was really very bad.  The story and the characters weren't well developed and even though it was first person narrative, there was very little inner monologue so you never even really got to know the MC!

My second novel was better, but still not great.  There was a lot of telling and because I was trying to tie together two stories in two time periods, neither got the attention they deserved.  But the characters were better in this one, and their motivations.

The third one actually showed some potential, despite being overly-melodramatic in terms of plot.  But I think I re-wrote that one several times to get to that point...  This one has a lot of characters, all of whom get their POV shown at times, and I think if this was to be re-worked into a publishable book, one character would need to be the focus instead of five.

Not that I think I'll be re-working it. The book I'm working on now seems to be a direct descendent of this early idea, but written better and with more focus.

So I'm feeling grateful that it was my fifth novel that was the first to get published.  I needed all those earlier attempts to learn how to write a novel.  Plus all the short stories I wrote in between and alongside those books.

What are your goals this week?  Have you ever gone back to read your early attempts at writing and cringed in horror?