When to Quit

How do you know when to give up on a manuscript? Should you quit after receiving a full page of scathing comments to your contest entry? After a dozen form rejections? Twenty? One hundred? Put another way: What do you do when you receive scathing comments or form rejections?

First, determine why you write in the first place. Is it for cash and glory? [Best to rethink that] To make a point? To entertain? Or for the pure joy of it?

I’m motivated to write fiction when a character pops into my head and starts calling my name. It’s kind of like that little kid at the community pool, who shouts, “Watch me, watch me, Mom! Watch me do this!” The kid might want to show off how long he can hold his breath or how awesome his cannon ball is. If “Mom” doesn’t give him her attention, he’ll either keep calling, or give up on her and go do something else. It’s the same with a story.

Many, many years ago a character called out to me. His name was Donovan Kiley Stafford, Jr. He might have been creative or he might have been nuttier than peanut brittle. When he started talking, I didn’t care because he spoke with an English accent. I listened and wrote down what he had to say. I also chased him up a tree and recorded what he did when I threw rocks at him (as authors are wont to do). He didn’t disappoint. His story turned into a novel that excited me so much I submitted the manuscript to an agent. It boomeranged back with a, “meh … no.”

I made revisions to it and set it aside. Okay, I misplaced it and pretty much forgot about it until I stumbled upon it during a day of cleaning. I reread it, still liked it, made more edits, but stopped short of resubmitting it. Does that mean I quit? Well … I don’t think it completely counts as quitting if you don’t throw away the hard copy or delete the story from your computer.

That story sat around for years. Not weeks, not months, years. While it collected dust, something else happened; I collected more experiences in life, as a reader and as a writer. Every few years I’d pull it out and make changes and put it away again. It went from the title, Lost Behind the Rainbow to When a Butterfly Dreams, until it finally became Broken Soul to Broken Soul.

About a year ago, when I learned that a publisher accepted novellas, the Kiley character called out to me again. What if the only thing his story needed to get a publisher’s attention was to pare it down to the bare essentials?

If you ever have an opportunity to turn a 78,000 word novel into one that’s less than 40,000 words, I highly recommend it. Cutting out 38,000 “darlings” is a challenge of a lifetime. It also gets you wondering: Can it be done? Will the shortened story still make sense?

It could and I thought it did. Unfortunately, the publisher where I submitted it disagreed.

I sent it to another publisher. That editor liked parts of it, but not all. Even if I made his suggested changes, he wasn’t sure if the bean counters would agree with him and allow it to be taken on. I appreciated his honesty, sent the manuscript to a third publisher … and got a third rejection. That one, though, came with a nugget of hope. If I made a few more changes they’d look at it again. I made changes and resubmitted.

Success! And here’s the cover:

My advice to anyone who has received scathing criticisms and/or multiple rejections is this: If you ever write a story that sings to you even though nobody else will dance to the tune, maybe the story just needs time for your experience to catch up to it. Because my answer to the question, “When should you quit?” is Never.