The Shelf; October 2 2021

One of the feelings I most detest is feeling like I’m ‘behind’. I set a goal in late August and essentially planned out the rest of my year around it – I was going to have my novel in progress, Neon Bethel, finished by October 1st. I was going to send it off to beta readers and start making a dent in my to-be-read list over the course of the month. I would edit in November, start querying in December.

Life, naturally, got in the way. Sigh. I estimate I’ve got about 15k left to write.

In one way, I’m glad I’m not completely finished yet. I applied to Pitch Wars (which is a mentorship program for authors – you can find out more about that here, if you’re interested!) with The Other Face of Sympathy, and part of me wonders if I’m so keen on finishing Neon Bethel so I can mentally shelve my other books.

I wouldn’t be giving up on them for good! This waiting period has just been rough. I have another six months before I can expect to hear anything from the publisher I submitted Mr. Wolf to, and I don’t know how much hope I should be clinging to when it comes to my queries for OFOS.

But that’s begged the question, in my mind: is there a point I could/might reach in which I’ll shelve a project for good?

There are a few books I’ve written that gather dust in my fiction folder. For the most part, I just lost interest in them. I know I could revamp them into far better versions of what they are, but I plain don’t care to – maybe the concept feels stale to me now, or I just think there are better things I could be writing.

But then there are the books I keep pounding away at querying. Some of them have been critiqued after I started querying and I’ve used those notes to improve what’s there, but there’s only so much refinement an author can do before it comes down to personal taste.

So if I truly believe the books are the best they can be, that the query is strong, and I’m not getting any responses – no requests to see more, no feedback on what they’ve seen – then… is it time? Do I give up on it? It seems likely, at that point, that no one’s going to want this book.

If you’re a writer who’s shelved a book before, what led you to that decision? Let me know in the comments!