[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Emily: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:21] Rachel: And today we want to talk about when and why to table a project.
[00:26] Emily: What?
[00:27] Rachel: We're going to talk about not doing.
[00:28] Emily: It to shelve it, set it aside, whatever.
[00:31] Rachel: Turn it away. Yes. Yeah.
[00:34] Emily: We're going to talk about when you should stop working on your project.
[00:37] Rachel: Why? Why are we talking about this?
[00:39] Emily: Why are we talking about this? We're talking about this because I have had a crazy month. Maybe I'll just start I'll start with a you start. When I first started writing, I started writing an epic fantasy. Now when I say epic, I mean, like, Sanderson level story. And this is where you and I met. I was working on this story, and it was freaking huge.
[01:07] Rachel: It was really big. It was a little intimidating, to be honest. Like, oh, my God, she's working on this thing. And I'm just writing, like, a little.
[01:16] Emily: Standalone and against everyone's advice. I was like, I have eight point of view characters and four different cultures and all of these things, right? I had so much going on, all these things. But I lived in that world for about five years. And when I say I lived there, I lived there, like, obsessively writing, like, most days and thinking about it all the time during my day job and then using that experience when we built our business. That project was a huge part of my life for five years.
[01:50] Rachel: So many spreadsheets.
[01:53] Emily: So many spreadsheets. Lots of backstory, I think. Lots. I wrote, like, 100,000.
[01:58] Rachel: Sure did. You sure did. You wrote an entire book of only backstory?
[02:04] Emily: I love it so much. But I was learning, right? I was learning. I was having fun, all this stuff. So two years ago, I was working on it, and I got halfway through it. When I say I got halfway through, I mean, I wrote 370,000 words, and I just hit this wall where I was exhausted. I was like, I can't work on this project anymore. I can't make it work. It was this spiral, and I even had beta readers being like, I love it. But everybody had the same kind of feedback of like, yeah, where you're ending it, where you're ending it halfway isn't going to work as a single book. And that was what I was trying to figure out, is can I query this at 150K?
[02:49] Rachel: Yeah.
[02:51] Emily: Because that was my goal at the time, was to take this book to traditional publishing, and I just hit this wall where I was like, this isn't working. I can't figure out how to make it work. And I had this other idea for the first time ever. And so I was like, I'm shelving it. It was really hard. Yeah, it was really hard. I kind of had to go cold. What is it?
[03:17] Rachel: Cold turkey?
[03:18] Emily: Yeah, cold fate. And I was like, that's not right, not same. So I went cold turkey on it because I was like, if I even think about it, it will give me like, this gut feeling. And for two years that was the case. There were like maybe three times where I either opened the document just to peek at it or I just played a song that was on one of the playlists and it was like a gut punch. I was like, no, I can't think. I went cold turkey. And I was like, I'm working on this other thing. Like, I'm just going to forget that I did that because it hurt too much, right? So I worked on this new story which we'll call Crimson. We'll call that one thrones. So first Story Thrones second Story crimson So I worked on Crimson for the last two years. And that was I've talked about a little bit a very fraught process, a whole other story. But I worked exclusively on that for two years and I learned so much and I finished it and I queried it this last January and it's out in the query world.
[04:24] Rachel: Yeah.
[04:26] Emily: And then I was facing this question of what do I want to work on next? And I was going to start a new project. And then I literally woke up in the middle of the night and I texted you. I was like, what if I worked on this?
[04:39] Rachel: I know, I was very surprised.
[04:43] Emily: I'm sure you were. You were like, what about that other idea? Are you afraid of it? And I was like, yes.
[04:52] Rachel: Context. You had been, like, taking a break from Crimson for a very specific reason. And you had this other idea that you kept telling me you just wanted to play with because you wanted to find joy again. And what I remembered of Thrones was not play, which is fair, super fair.
[05:10] Emily: As a friend, you should have been like, question mark.
[05:13] Rachel: Yeah, well, I had some and I was like, if you had not gone into it seeming like you were playing, I would have circled back for sure. But we gave you some time.
[05:25] Emily: I mean, it was a valid question, and I think that's a valid question. Whenever you're going to go back to a project, it's like, what's the difference between when you've tabled it and now?
[05:33] Rachel: Right?
[05:34] Emily: So I had no idea what to expect. The second I started going into it, I didn't even reread it. I started re outlining it right away because in my two years of refusing to think about it, the whole thing just like, clicked together in the back of my brain. It literally feels like I, for the last few weeks have been walking through this very strange, fever dream where I am looking at my character's arcs and I'm like, there's the problem. Bye. And then I'm like, I can hear myself.
[06:08] Rachel: I don't hear you. I mean, maybe you seem a little loud.
[06:13] Emily: Maybe it's because I'm in your headphones. I'll move out a little bit. Not very loud, just like very quietly.
[06:22] Rachel: I do have my headphones. As per usual, nothing has changed.
[06:26] Emily: Yeah, I don't know. You were a little close to it. So maybe it was just picking it up.
[06:29] Rachel: Maybe I was a little close to it.
[06:30] Emily: I'll make some kind of signal if I can hear it again.
[06:34] Rachel: Okay.
[06:34] Emily: What was I saying?
[06:38] Rachel: You're in a fever dream.
[06:40] Emily: Oh, yes.
[06:41] Rachel: I don't know how I'm going to edit this together. You're in a fever dream.
[06:45] Emily: Okay, we're coming back in. Yeah, we had some weird audio stuff. I don't remember what I was talking about. I'll just be straight up honest. We were talking about me and my fever dream and like, all of the pieces clicking together. And I've written I don't think I've told you this. I've written 7500 words so far that's awesome. In the past couple of weeks without really trying to. And I have to keep reminding myself that it's because I've worked on this book for five years that fresh traps are not going to feel like this. But I'm realizing in this experience, I've been thinking back to, okay, what's the difference between now and then, right. And what I've realized is that I was way too close to and attached to my story. Two years ago. When I stopped it, I was so deep in it that I could not see. I just couldn't see it clearly. I couldn't see what it needed. And I think even if I'd had perspective, I didn't have the skills to know what it needed. And working on Crimson gave me those skills. And starting fresh on a story and starting from the ground up and really building the foundation with the craft knowledge that I had at that point and building a story that way gave me that craft knowledge that I needed to be able to see now what it needs and the writing skills to be able to pull it off because it's so complicated. So that's like at a craft level, I've grown so much that I can do what it needs to do. But then I've given myself space and the clarity and removed the emotional attachment.
[08:26] Rachel: Right.
[08:26] Emily: I've essentially grieved it. There was a time a few months ago I didn't think I would ever pick this story up again. So in my brain, I'm not emotionally attached to the previous version of it anymore. Just really important to be able to make these massive changes. But also my mindset has changed so much around what's possible. Because when I tabled this story, it felt like traditional was the only path forward. And I was trying to fit a book into that industry standards that just didn't want to fit there.
[08:59] Rachel: Right.
[09:00] Emily: And so the second that now that I've gone through that mindset shift and I am more familiar with other industries and other ways of publishing. I can see how this story makes so much more sense as a self published series because I can break it into the smaller bits that I need to. And I can separate the points of view in the way that I need to and publish novellas of backstory that I need to to get the story to come across in the way that makes sense for this story, which traditional, like, maybe would do for Brandon Zekerson. And that's it, right? So so I can see it now, and it just feels so much more. It feels free. Like, when I had that realization, I was like, oh my gosh, I can see what I can do with it. And I just felt this immense sense of freedom to be able to explore what the story was actually asking me to do. But that was a huge mindset shift that I had to go through over the last two years. So I wanted to bring that story and this question, because I know you've also tabled a story, if not multiple stories in the past, and talk about how do we know when it's right to table a story and how do we know when it's right to pick it back up, and why would we do that? And all those questions that we get a lot from people, it's like, when do I give up, right?
[10:18] Rachel: Yeah. Do we have two pieces of your story of the feelings leading up to the decision to table it? Yeah, maybe. Actually, let's talk about, like, three pieces, because then you have your period of growth where you were away from it, and then you had your decision to step back into it. We have, like, a three layer decision, and I would also love to break that down because I have tabled it, but I have not yet decided to go back to it. I've been working on a couple of other projects.
[10:50] Emily: So let's talk first about the decision to table. Why don't you talk? I've been talking, like, a lot. I'm going to drink some water. You talk about your decision to table power story and what a power struggle and what led into that.
[11:07] Rachel: Yeah. So I started writing. It had started out as a Ya fantasy when I was Ya. So I was in high school, college, when I had first started getting into reading, it was the Hunger Games era, it was the Twilight era, it was Dystopian era, divergent, all those really popular Ya books at the time. And so I really got into writing around that time and started this story in that period. As I grew, things shifted, but I still worked on the story. I became an adult. I wanted to talk about adult things. And so my story shifted. I took a break. I came back to it. My writing had changed, and by the time I had actually finished a draft revised it once queried, it jumped back into revisions. And I got to a point where I felt like I had like, a Frankenstein story. I had 1000 pieces of 1000 ideas that I had just patched together because I was working on them. And it didn't feel cohesive. It didn't feel whole, it didn't feel close to what I as a person felt at that time. It felt like I was still trying to pick up the pieces of young adult me and try to make them make sense into now adult version story.
[12:34] Emily: Yeah.
[12:35] Rachel: So it also was becoming way more of a mental drain than something that made me really exciting. So I started to feel very heavily that writing was an obligation versus the story, like the thing that I wanted to do with my life. And this was also at the same time that I met you. I mean, I was working on power struggle when I met you and I had tons of comparison with you and with other writers. And I felt like I would waste so much time if I started working on something different. And so I had like, stubbornly held onto it for a very long time and it was not the same for me anymore. It didn't have the same vision. It didn't reflect who I wanted. I had changed my story point like.
[13:23] Emily: Four times, so it just was like.
[13:25] Rachel: It felt like a hot mess. I had decided to table it because or wrapped up in all of these feelings. It was like I didn't know what I wanted it to be. I knew that I had started it in a market that no longer really existed or that was super saturated. That was another thing. I knew that even if I worked so hard to write this Dystopian esque story, who would want to read it in the trad world because it was so saturated. I had grown so much as a writer that I felt like half of my story reflected old me and half of my story reflected new me. And I wasn't going to make those two things fit together.
[14:15] Emily: It's so legit, though. I'm in that place right now where my prose I talked about structural skills, but my prose level skills are so I'm not reading a different book. I'm thinking through what I need the scene to be and that I'm peeking at the old version and being like, what can I keep? And then I'd be like, trying to I'm, like, rewriting the whole thing because I'm like, my skills are so different.
[14:36] Rachel: Yeah, I knew I would need to do that, but I did not have the heart to do it. Yeah, I lost heart in the story, and so I decided to table it and to work on something else that was going to be more fun. And so I dabbled in like, a couple of projects before I settled on what I'm working on right now. Which I still love and I'm having a ton of fun with. But so much of why I dropped it was my heart wasn't in it and it wasn't fulfilling me and engaging me the way that it had when I was younger. And I, as a person, did not want to tell that story anymore.
[15:17] Emily: Yeah.
[15:18] Rachel: Not that I don't want like, I fully believe that I will come back to those characters, but I don't think I'll tell the same story with them, which is interesting because I think that story has been told and I think that these characters want to say something different. And I always was trying to make them say something like lost Princess finding her crown. And like, that story has been said. I don't know that my character wants to say that. I think maybe she's got something different that I yeah, she grew up. She had, like, other things that she's trying to explore. I know I'm going to eventually come back to it, just not right now, because I still don't think it's the right time. I still don't know that I have that vision yet for where I want to take the story, but I'm also not ready to completely say I'm done with them because I love them. I love those characters and the heart of it, the idea of it, still feels real to me, but I need to refind those foundations that kind of crumbled. In the midst of all of my growing up, I was trying to make my story grow up, but I couldn't. That was a skill thing, but it also was like a mindset and a heart thing.
[16:30] Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny, I feel like there's so a lot of these we have some bullets on why you might think about tabling a story. And I think there's a lot of overlap between our two stories, so we can kind of break down these. Why would you table a story? And if this is something that you are thinking about? I do not want to diminish how hard it is. It's a deeply emotional thing. It's essentially like breaking up with someone.
[17:03] Rachel: Yes.
[17:05] Emily: And so we deeply understand what you're going through, and hopefully this will be helpful. So, number one, it's not fun anymore. Both of us were not having fun with our writing when we decided to table these projects. They had become burdens, and for me, I was being driven all of my actions and frustrations were being driven by external validation questions of who will pick this story up? Will they pick it up? If they're not going to pick it up, will it be worth it? Those were the things I was conscious of happening that consciously led me to put it down and start something else. That in my head, I was like, it's going to be more marketable at the time.
[17:55] Rachel: Yeah.
[17:56] Emily: Eight rejections later, I can tell you.
[17:59] Rachel: But, like, eight?
[18:00] Emily: It's not marketable. But that's a different question. But right. You can't make your decisions based on that external validation in any way, shape or form.
[18:11] Rachel: And I want to add something there is that you can't make your decision to hold on to a story based on those external validations either because there's so much baggage wrapped up in this idea to let it go. And for me, one of those huge baggage pieces was that I believe tabling it was failing and that I wanted the external motivation. And so I worked on the story for probably years longer than I really should have, than I really wanted to, like you're saying. And that was my decision to hold onto it. So the same way that you shouldn't be driven by that to let go of it. Don't let that influence why you're holding onto it so hard if the only thing that you're looking at is I just want to be published. Because you're not going to write the best version of that story if it's killing you and it's so hard right now, but the only reason you're doing it is because you want to publish it.
[19:03] Emily: Yeah. And you feel like if you don't, then you have failed in some way. Shelving, a story is not failure.
[19:11] Rachel: Yes.
[19:11] Emily: It's not failure. It's not failure. It is a successful decision because you are choosing yourself, your journey, your joy, you are choosing your growth.
[19:22] Rachel: Right.
[19:23] Emily: You are choosing all of these other things that are way more important than that one story in that moment. And that might be the reason that that story is successful later. Because of all the things we're going to talk about later when we talk about the benefits of it, it is not a failure.
[19:40] Rachel: Okay?
[19:42] Emily: Another reason to table a story is because you recognize that you don't have the craft chops yet. And that is so hard to admit. I'm a very prideful person. And around the time that I was trying to figure out what the heck to do with this book that I this mess of a book that I had in front of me, one of my writer friends who loves to push my buttons was like I told him about this news story idea that I had, which ended up being Crimson. And he was like, well, you should just stop and write that. And I was like, Why? And he was like, well, because you don't have the skills to write this to write Thrones yet, so you should write that first. And I was like, Fuck you. And I probably held on for like three more months because he said, Right. But something deep inside me had that reaction because I knew it was true. And now I can see it was very true. I didn't have the structural craft knowledge or the prose level skills that I needed to pull the book off in the way that I wanted to. And the only way to grow in that way, in my opinion, is to work on something else.
[20:49] Rachel: Yeah. The parallel for me there was that when I wrote the first draft of Power Struggle 100% Panced, I've talked about this before where very early versions of my writing process was just writing, coming up with random things as I could and then putting it on the page because outlines were so stupid to me. And when I was trying to fix this draft later, it was just piecemeal. It was pieces because I hadn't learned craft, but I also hadn't found the process that worked for my brain. So the entire writing process just felt like just so uneasy and draining and unsatisfying because not only was I trying to fix a story, I didn't have the craft skills to fix. I also didn't understand how craft could work for my brain yet. And I was almost rejecting craft at the same time that I was trying to fix the story.
[21:51] Emily: That's a place to be, right.
[21:53] Rachel: So I had to really go back to, how am I going to make craft work for me and for my books and develop something brand new? And I could not have done that in the weeds of Power Struggle. I needed the brand new project because I needed the clean slate to figure out the craft knowledge that I had learned. How could I apply it in the practical idea to finish execution?
[22:21] Emily: Yes. 1000%. Yes. Okay, so I'm going to jump to another reason to table a story is because your skills have grown so much that you'd be better off starting fresh.
[22:33] Rachel: Right.
[22:33] Emily: So equally, you might not have for me, I didn't have the skills in the moment to work on that story, but I also had gained skills that I was having trouble putting into this story or like, using on this story because this story was such a tangled mess in my head and I couldn't see it clearly. So when I started Crimson and I started Fresh, I was able to take all of those skills that I had gained and use a fresh slate to prove to myself that I could use them and that they would be successful and that I had grown. And through that process, I grew so much more. And I see people a lot who could benefit from this in that they have been studying writing for so long, but working on the same story for so long that they're not really able to apply the skills that they have to the book that they've been working on because it's just all too confusing. And I want to be like, just put it aside for a minute and start something else. I can see your skills. I can see your frustration. I can see how much more fun you would have if you let yourself free those skills onto a fresh page. That's a beautiful thing. Do not discount the power that that can have on your growth.
[23:50] Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. And I wrote half of one draft of Power Struggle and took, like, a two year break when I was finishing up college. And then I came back and wrote the second half. And you could literally it was like a line of delineation. Like, you could literally tell where that happened. And then I went back and I tried to fix the first half, and I completely rewrote it. And then the second half was like, oh, my God, this is so bad. So I just kept leveling up each half of my book, and then none of it made sense. And I was like, I know I have the skills. This book is bringing my skills down.
[24:27] Emily: And it's almost like I would argue when you're starting out, that happens so often, because people have been working on their first book for three or four or five or ten years, right? In that early period, you grow so much, so fast that you are growing faster than you can write the book. And so a lot of people get in this position where it's like they don't see their own skills reflected in their story because it's not like they can't get it on the page fast enough.
[25:00] Rachel: Right?
[25:01] Emily: Those are the people that I'm like, start fresh. Just start something new. You'll see your growth in that.
[25:07] Rachel: Yes. What's next?
[25:12] Emily: What if we skip? I skipped, like, four of these. Okay, so next is and we've talked about this. Why? Table of story? Because you're too close to it. You can't see it. And oftentimes this leads to band aiding something, band aiding a project with these little fixes because you can't see the fundamental problems clearly. And that's where I was. That's why I was so frustrated, is because I was revising and revising and revising, especially that last year. And I was revising small things because I couldn't see the fundamental problems that two years of space have made very clear to me. And I was too attached to the fundamentals of the story. I was too afraid to rip it up and start over, that I needed to table it to give myself space.
[25:59] Rachel: Yeah, I think I have done the band aiding thing so much, especially since I was trying to Frankenstein my story together. I kept coming up with those one off ideas, and I kept changing this world building thing, expecting it to fix all my problems. And then the world got super complicated, and then the characters were like, I was trying to fit them inside the world, even though it didn't make sense. So, yeah, it became more of a band aided Frankenstein than anything close to completely making sense and cohesive. And I was just tired of doing that, too. That's draining. That's draining.
[26:40] Emily: So draining.
[26:41] Rachel: The more you put bandaids on, you know what you're doing, and then you go back and you read it and.
[26:45] Emily: You'Re like, what happened. Exhausted. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's all of them. Is that all of them?
[26:53] Rachel: Yeah. We talked a little bit about this in my story, but as I grew, the meaning of my story changed. And so by the time that I was writing, like, draft four or five, I was trying to tell a lot different of a story than what I had started out with. And it was really hard to reconcile those two meanings. And it wasn't like I was redoing each draft with the new meaning that I had in mind. I couldn't quite understand what was my message, what did it mean to me, what did I care about? And so I realized at one point that I didn't know my message and I didn't know what the story meant to me or to my readers. And that was maybe one of the last couple of nails in the coffin to be like, I need to put this away until I can come back and figure that out.
[27:41] Emily: The similar thing happened to me. Not in that I didn't know my message, I had a message, but something subconscious in me didn't like it.
[27:50] Rachel: Yeah.
[27:51] Emily: And it took me two years to figure out what I actually want to say. And the themes of the story have shifted massively, but it like in a way where so before, the major theme of it was justice, and you remember that now the biggest theme is exploitation. You know, the story. Yeah, I did probably see, like, oh, I can see how that fits. Like everything that I was already trying to do the same, but different. Yeah, it was like looking at it through different glasses. And now that I can see that, I'm like, this is what I want to say. And that means all of this can go and all of this can stay, and this needs to change. It's this immense clarity, but I couldn't see it in the moment because I was so convinced that was my message. And changing your message is very intimidating because you're like, everything's going to change.
[28:38] Rachel: I know, because I was just thinking this in a lot of our teaching and a lot of our craft resources. We start with that message and we build the whole story around that message. If you change that message, there are ripple effects. And those ripple effects can seem intimidating, very large, difficult to manage. It almost feels like you have to start from scratch. This podcast is not about revisions, but it's not necessarily true. But it can feel like that, especially if you're so lost and so in.
[29:07] Emily: The weed, especially if you're in the weeds. Because I was so close to it. Now I'm like, it's not big changes. I'm fundamentally changing the foundation of my story, and it makes more sense, which means everything makes more sense. And I don't have to change that much. I just am tweaking the intention of everything.
[29:27] Rachel: It's.
[29:28] Emily: Fascinating how it just clicked everything into place.
[29:31] Rachel: Right?
[29:32] Emily: And I know that's hard to be like that's going to happen for you, because I can't promise that it will. But it happens so much more often.
[29:38] Rachel: Than you think it does. So that's why you should table a story. All those reasons are very valid reasons. There are more if you come up with one or if you're thinking or feeling something different. I'd say listen to your gut and come back to kind of those boundary questions of what is this burden? Is this fun? Does the meaning still make sense to you? Are you two in the weeds? Do you need space to see clarity? But then you had a period of growth.
[30:10] Emily: I did.
[30:11] Rachel: And then you gained knowledge, changed mindset and you came back to it. So let's talk about that. Yeah.
[30:20] Emily: So I tabled my story and then.
[30:22] Rachel: I picked it back up.
[30:22] Emily: And I mean it when I say I did not think about it for two whole years. I couldn't do it right. So when I started diving into it, it was incredible how much my subconscious had worked on just in the background. But the biggest benefits that I have recognized that I gained in taking that time away was that I got massive clarity on what the story needs. And and I think all of these things are connected. But clarity is like the biggest thing my skills leveled up by working on and finishing another story. This is a big asterisk, but a big part of that was I had never finished a draft before because yeah, story was so big. And so when I started working on Crimson, that was literally my biggest goal was just get to the end of something because I had spent so much time restarting Thrones like 1000 million times.
[31:23] Rachel: Yeah.
[31:23] Emily: And so that was huge for me. So I was able to finish something, I was able to revise that thing fully. I was able to really level up my skills at a prose level and at a story structure level. I got two years of space from my frustration. And I talked about this earlier, but I grieved the book and let it go in its form at that time. So now I don't have any connection to it whatsoever in that way, which is massive in being able to make those huge changes and see it with clarity. And then the other biggest thing is I got huge mindset growth. Huge mindset growth on my process, on what I want to say, on my belief in myself, but also in letting go of that belief that there was one way to success and that my book had to fit one industry's version of what a book should look like. When I was able to let go of that external validation and see a different path for the story, it opened everything up. Those were the big things.
[32:31] Rachel: Yeah. So for me, I've not come back to it. I don't want to yet. I'm not ready to.
[32:38] Emily: If you asked me like three months ago, I would have been like.
[32:44] Rachel: I also don't think that when I finish this next, when I finish the story I'm working on now and publish it, I don't think I'll want to come back to it then. But I do know that I think I'll trust myself to know when I want to come back to it. Like I said earlier, I don't want to let those characters go. I do want to. And it's not that I don't believe that I've leveled up my skills. I do. It's not that I don't think I've gotten space from that frustration, so I don't care about it. I don't have that same frustration marketability. I feel the same way. Like, I've learned so much about the path I want to take to success, and I feel a lot differently about where that path is going to take me. And my mindset growth looks a lot different. But then like I said earlier, I don't have the vision. And I also don't think that if I came back to this moment, it would be the clear vision that I would want it to be.
[33:35] Emily: And that's okay.
[33:36] Rachel: So I'm just going to hang out in my Scrivener files for a while. It's chillin. Yeah, I'll circle around to it. I saw my Pinterest Sports that I like to peruse every now and then and be like, oh, yeah, remember that? I got like my itunes playlist. Don't listen to them, but I see them.
[33:54] Emily: Those playlists are the hardest part. It's like a breakup playlist. You're like, that was my song with that person. I can't go, right? But I love that. I love what you're saying because another question people might have is how do I know? How do I know if I should come back to a story? And I would vehemently say, because it sounds like the best freaking fucking thing in the world. Like, I woke up in the middle of the night and was like, whoa, I'm going to go back to it sounds so fun. And then I texted Rachel and she was like, okay, question, are you sure? And I was like, I don't know. And I explored it. It could have gone two ways at that point. I could have sat down, gotten frustrated, realized how big this story was and that I was just trying to cop out on not starting something new.
[34:41] Rachel: Right?
[34:41] Emily: Yeah, that could have happened. It very much could have. Instead, it was like the easiest. I just fell into flow. If that doesn't happen, you're not ready.
[34:51] Rachel: Yeah, you're not ready, period.
[34:54] Emily: It's got to sound like joy because otherwise you're going to fall into all the same patterns that you were trying to escape by sampling it in the first place.
[35:04] Rachel: Yeah. Awesome. This is such a fun discussion and I want to again. Reiterate tabling. Your story is not a failure. It's also not lost time. Hear that? All the time. I wasted years on this. No, you didn't, because you learned the five years that you were on Thrones, taught you so much and gave you so much love for the whole process. And the same time that I was on power struggle, I learned everything that I wanted to learn about writing, and now I'm just applying that somewhere different. And if I hadn't have had power struggle, I would not have gone through that transformation that's led me to where I am now.
[35:47] Emily: Yeah. Your own is enough. If either of us never came back to these stories ever in our lives, it wouldn't matter. It would still be worth it. So I want to make that because we're both I'm back in my story. You're like, someday I'm going to get back. You might be like, I tippled something five years ago and I'm never going to touch it again.
[36:04] Rachel: It doesn't matter.
[36:05] Emily: It was still worth it. Whether you come back to it or not has nothing to do with whether or not it was worth it to work on that story.
[36:11] Rachel: Yeah. Or like, whether or not you are good enough to fix it. Because we've talked about now we have the skills to go back and fix it. You can still have those skills and choose not to do that. Yeah.
[36:21] Emily: It's got to feel like joy.
[36:23] Rachel: It had its time and you're moving on. That's okay. So this is a good decision if this is what you choose to do and it is a helpful and empowering decision if this is where you're at.
[36:35] Emily: Yeah. We're behind you 1000%.
[36:38] Rachel: Yes. All right.
[36:40] Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[36:47] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night. Links in the show notes.
[36:57] Emily: We'll see you there. Thanks, everyone.
[36:59] Rachel: Thank you. Bye.
[37:04] Emily: You and.
