It’s Just a Love Story

How to Return to Your First Novel; How to Revise instead of Rewriting Over and Over Again

Photo by Salvador Martin Yeste on Unsplash

I’m still in love with my first novel.

I have a whole long and sordid history with this book; I started writing it shortly after my entire world fell apart, back in 2010. I didn’t know how to write a novel back then. I mean, I did know enough to start writing; had gleaned the basic ideas of how to tell a story from a lifetime of writing, but I wasn’t good at it. I hadn’t immersed myself into the writing community; hadn’t read the thousands of blog posts about various minute techniques of the craft.

I just wrote.

Originally, the story was about a girl whose best friend died, but not before sending her on a scavenger hunt to figure out the truth of her apparent suicide. It was a weird book, and I’m not entirely sure that it worked. When I write, I like to imagine that I’m watching my characters’s lives unfold before me. And when I was writing at this initial stage, it was like I was watching through a blur filter. I couldn’t see things clearly.

But I didn’t know that then. I thought I knew them pretty well. Over time, I had enough ideas for backstory, and I knew that I wanted to write prequels. Two prequels, along with the original novel. And maybe a couple…