when your characters die

Here's the thing. I used to write fiction. I say "used to" because I haven't finished a piece of fiction in over four years and I'm not sure I ever will again. But back when I was turning 30 and wondering how the hell my life had gotten to where it was then, I decided on two goals for the upcoming decade. The second one was to become a published writer.

I bought all the beginner's writing and how-to-get-published books I could find and read them faithfully (since my Creative Writing experience in high school had consisted of two years of getting A's for showing up and occasionally handing something in and my Creative Writing experience in college was all about paying lots of money to have some earnest grad student tell me my crap poetry was promising.) I read the books and bought My First P.C. (tm) and decided to start out easy by writing a novel.

Oh, yes, write a novel I did. I wrote and wrote and eventually I finished a manuscript. It was--don't snicker--a science fiction romance. Sorta. I said, stop snickering. That's a valid genre. My manuscript, however, was not a valid book. It had some plot problems and some bigger worldbuilding problems. On the plus side, besides being finished, it had some good dialogue and some kickass characterization. More on that later.

All my how-to books were telling me that it was easier to get a novel looked at if you'd published some short fiction, so I wrote some. I wrote some, and got a little better at writing, and eventually got some of it published. For real money, even. (Go, Andrea! Goals accomplished by 33, leaving the rest of the decade to slack off. Damn good thing they'd already invented the Internet.)

Meanwhile, I hooked up with a critique group full of people who were serious about all this and workshopped my book. And despite the numerous essential flaws in the manuscript, the one thing everyone agreed on was that they loved my characters. Hell, I loved my characters. Star-crossed lovers Ayla and Liam. Snotty, snarky, sexy Joey and her smoothly evil brother, Bri. Roguish opportunist and ladies' man Rael. The bullying, but ultimately tragic, Captain. And most of all, the complexity that is Jesse. They were like real people to me, with real (fictional) lives.

Part of why I kept trying to re-write that unsalvageable book was that to give up on them, to give up on anyone other than a select few of my friends ever reading the novel, meant they would "die." Or cease to exist. Giving up on them was like commiting murder, murder of people I was really fond of.

As recently as three years ago, I dragged the manuscript out again and tried, unsuccessfully, to revise it.

I think I've got to say it.

R.I.P., Ayla, R.I.P.

xoxo