What I've Learned from Writing the Same Book (Series) for 10 Years
Follow my blog and Instagram, and you’ll find that in between writing a bunch of short stories, I’ve really been working on the same novel since I was twelve. I’m twenty-five now (birthday was this past week). My book has been in my life longer than it’s been out of it. The Astra Series, as I’m calling it, is a part of me, and not something I can let go of easily.
A book is as close as one can get to having a child. Books are the Athena to everyone’s Zeus—born of brain power, imagination, and our own spirit. So when I heard I that if you’ve been working on your book for more than five years, you need to let it go, I was stung. How could I just let go of this piece, these characters and world and lore and themes, that I felt would help so many other people, like they helped me. I resolved that no, this author is wrong, and that they didn’t understand.
This mentality of both “killing” a book, or stop working on one that’s taken you more than five years to write, has its pros and cons to it. The biggest con is sinking time into one book when you could’ve been writing something else that would get you a publishing deal (if that’s what you want.) But there are no cons to writing. Practice is practice, and it’s always a positive force in the journey to authorship. I’ve realized now at twenty-five (and working on The Astra Series for more than ten years) there’s a lot of reasons to give up on your current WIP and just as many for why you shouldn’t give up on your book. I hope you find my journey, and my advice, motivating so you can keep working on your book.
Why People Give Up on Their Work
It’s hard to let go of any work you’ve spent hours devoting your creative energy to, and why we give up on something is deeply personal. Maybe you’ve been shopping for an agent, but no one is biting. Maybe you get an agent but not a publishing offer, so you move onto another project, leaving that one alone.
There’s a hard truth to the “give it up after five years” opinion that, even myself, does need to hear. Maybe you’re shopping your book around for an agent, but no one bites. Or you have an agent and are trying to get a publishing deal from the big five or a strong indie, and you aren’t getting any bites. That may be a time to switch from that project to another and save the one you just completed. But please, don’t ever trash it. You never know what people will want to read from you once you create a great base for yourself!
It could be no matter what you do, you have blank screen syndrome and can’t finish it, so you jump to a new project and write this one in your spare time. Totally valid, and I would argue that you haven’t given up on the work, you just “paused” it.
The perfectionist complex is the most deadly mindset a writer can get into. Writing is subjective, and you will have readers who love one aspect of your book, only to find another group of readers saying that it’s convoluted or not well developed. Again, subjectiveness is pervasive in the industry. The fear of what readers will say and the subjectivity of writing can make the best authors freeze, and if you let fear control you, you’ll end up answering to the void of angry trolls on Twitter rather than who you owe the best book too: your ideal readers, your characters, and yourself. (Side note: I’m not on Twitter/X, but you can find me on Instagram @SterlingMZWrites sharing updates on my journey to self-publishing in 2025. I’ve only heard about the anger that is pervasive on Twitter/X, and have decided against being on that platform for my own mental health.)
My Journey with Writing the Astra Series
Fifth grade, recess. A girl comes up to me and says that I should write a book. I say okay, not knowing anything about books or writing. This girl and I weren’t even particularly close friends.
Sixth grade, I get my first creative writing assignment. It’s for extra credit, an international competition. I’m the most excited about it, and talk to my teacher a lot about what to do and what the timeline is. All that had to be in it was Big Ben (contest requirements) and we were off to the races.
Nothing came of that, but in seventh grade, I started to get an ich for the novel, my novel, Astra: Chasing the Prophecy (title might be developed to fit more of the YA/NA space now, but for all intents and purposes, this is Book 1’s current title). I’ve been working on her story, and other short stories, since.
Astra and I have gone through a lot: lost/corrupted files, people nit picking and asking me questions because the opening paragraph was too confusing (maybe they were right, but I also think when people have access to the author, they ask more questions than giving the book an honest shot and wait for the author to reveal their hand one chapter at a time.), people giving me feedback on character development that I thought I had down solid. We’ve gone through high school together where the only books I would read were the ones that were assigned, since I reasoned that in my spare time, it’s better for me to use my time writing than reading. College, it was about the same, but I was writing more for my classes than I was my book. In that time, I realized that my skills were growing a lot, but my characters weren’t. So, I started the book from scratch. Then again when the pacing was too slow. And again, when my skills got better both in storytelling and writing.
I tried new scenes, built out lore, understood my characters further. I’ve realized now that writing was not only hard for me because: first, I was young and trying my hand at writing a novel without reading a lot (most authors don’t publish their first novel until they’re in their late twenties to mid-thirties) and second, my skills in both narrative storytelling and writing needed to grow. This does not mean my concept was bad in any way, or it wouldn’t have a market. I didn’t give up because I, as an storyteller and writer, needed to catch up with the book conceptually so I could do it justice on both a prose and plot level.
I’m at that level now, and in wanting to be both an author and entrepreneur (authorpreneur, as the term is now circling), I’ve realized that it wasn’t bad to not let go of my novel for all the reasons that I’ve listed below.
Reasons Why You Shouldn't Give Up on Your Book
1. Writing Skills Need Growth
Let’s be real: a twelve year old’s writing isn’t going to sell a great fantasy book to people who read a lot of fantasy. There’s more nuances in language and storytelling that I hadn’t grasped when I started writing the Astra Series. So when told that I needed to “give up” and start something new, let Astra’s story die, I didn’t believe it. I believe that I, as the author, needed to buckle down, get better, and keep cracking at her story until I could see all the small fragments and piece the puzzle together faster than I could say, “Let’s write.”
My advice isn’t to “give up” on a manuscript. You can pause and pivot. Maybe you take a hiatus to give yourself some breathing room (see my blog "Why You Should Write Short Stories" for the benefits of working on short works) and come back with new skills and fresh perspectives.
I’ve read a lot of books now in the space I’m writing in, have read books on writing craft, working for an indie publisher, completed my degree, and written multiple short stories. My skills are finally at a place where I feel comfortable on a prose level to put out a book and be proud of the writing that I’ve done. It takes a lot of work to know your craft and narrative voice, but the more you work at it through both your WIP and other stories, the faster you’ll get to putting out the story you love with your unique voice.
2. Plots and Premises Trip Everyone Up
They do. Even the best writers struggle at points in their book when they’re characters do something out of character, a plot hole gets created, or let the manuscript go on for too long, making the pacing suffer. Key factors can get lost in your writing, especially if you’re writing a series, so it’s not unusual for keeping track of lore, plot points, Chekov’s guns, foreshadowing elements, etc., to avoid lost details or unintended contradictions. Writing hurdles are normal. They’re part of the territory. Just because you can’t see “The End” marker guiding you to the resolution of your story right at this moment doesn’t mean you’ll never figure it out.
My advice is to go back and reread what you have written for that, see where maybe you messed up. Rewrite the scene that drags. Cut the scene that has an irrelevant part you’ve been trying to make work but isn’t and causes problems down the line. If you can cut off the fat from the meat, you’ll be left with a delicious story that will satisfy your reader’s appetite.
3. No One Can Tell Your Story Like You Can
This one has been said a lot on social media and little quote/inspiration boards, but it’s true. I remind myself of this every time: no one knows Astra’s story like I do. It is my job, as the author, to unravel it for you and make you engaged enough with her goals and hurdles to watch her go through this journey. I know her mind, her heart, her motivations and fears. I have healed and grown with her. I understand her struggles, not only as the author, but someone who has been through the ups and downs of achieving only to have victory taken away. If I gave someone my outline or even told them what my premise was, we’d end up with two very different manuscripts, two extremely different version of Astra.
No one can introduce her like I can, and this is why books are wonderful. They are original. They are brain children. No one can introduce your character like you, so please, continue writing. Your future audience will thank you for it.
4. There’s a Reader Waiting for Your Book Specifically
Notice how, in the market, publishing will put out one great book and then a ton of very similar books will follow. This happened with the Hunger Games—dystopian was flooded for a while. In my personal opinion, we are in the Fae era currently with the rise of New Adult fantasy and romantasy (people want their “touch her and die,” enemies-to-lovers fantasies, so we’ll be seeing a lot of those). There was also a blip of fairytale retellings, and I was getting a bit bored when it was all I was seeing for years.
Your story might not be any of the things that are on trend, but I encourage you to write it anyway. “Write the story you long to read” is one of my mottos, and I believe that for each author out there writing a story, there is a reader out there, waiting to read it. Write the story as best as you can get it, shop it around (if you want) or self-publish (if you want). Save it for a day that you start to see a demand for it, or fight to be the cornerstone of your genre and set the trend. Wish lists for lit agents change all the time, and people demand new content just as quick. They could be demanding your book next.
If you’re struggling to write this particular story, please, do NOT trash it. Save it. Print it out if you must, and keep the pages in a fire-resistant box. Upload to a cloud storage. Let it percolate in the background for when you are ready to take on that manuscript. My advice is if you are really stuck, save it and start a new project, but still allow yourself to come back to that book from time to time. Let it be fresh and loved by you. If you believe in the concept, you can make it work, and you will find a reader out there that will love you for all the labor that you put into their favorite book ever.
Comments