The Novel That Never Was: A Retrospective
Want to hear about a story I had to put away for good?
Welcome back to The Cat’s Cradle. In today’s episode, we’ll be getting existential as we dive into the psyche of one Jillian Spiridon—
Oh, wait, that’s me!
But, seriously, I have a plan for today: namely, we’re going to talk about that sparkly phase of first love many writers experience.
We’re going to focus on first novel drafts.
In particular, let me introduce you to Deepen, my first novel draft that never took flight as I had once hoped it would.
What’s the story?
Written in the first-person, the draft followed a teenager named Fader Forsythe in a small town called Birch Arbor. Devastated by losing his parents in a freak accident, Fader finds himself grappling with very real manifestations of human emotions that take the forms of shadows and monsters. His secret legacy? He must protect the town from these threats—all the while battling his own effigies born from repressed grief.
But those aren’t the only threats out there: a couple, smooth-talking Antony and ice-queen Isabel, come into town one day and show an interest in the loneliest souls that make up the town. Later, Fader comes to the realization that these two people are here to coax out the darkest emotions from Birch Arbor’s populace. Why? Antony and Isabel suck the life force from unsuspecting individuals for the purpose of maintaining their immortality.
Are you still with me? Or did you clock out when you realized this novel idea was just riding on the coattails of supernatural YA novels of the time? (I started the novel in 2009.)
If you’re still lingering here, then I’ll carry on.
Why didn’t you finish it?
I’m sure no one’s raring to read a novel like Deepen these days—the Twilight era burned a lot of readers out, and I was one of them—but sometimes I think back and wonder, “What if?” Fader remains the character closest to my heart, despite my having met hundreds by now, and his visceral reactions to his own grief mirrored how I imagined I would have felt about the reality of losing my own parents.
But the novel as I wrote it lacked proper propulsion in its plot. The draft I wrote mainly focused on the bond Fader develops with Isabel—who’s revealed to have lived during the French Revolution, only to be brought into a cult made up of shadow-makers thriving off pain and despair. As I wrote the draft, it was the relationship between the two of them that made up the story’s heart for me. Here you had a boy running from his emotions and a girl embracing her darkest side to try and survive in a cruel world. What kind of force would they be when they met?
Such a dichotomy between the main character and someone who plays both love interest and nemesis is a great set-up—but I could not for the life of me figure out how to steer the story back to other people in the story (Antony, Fader’s cousin Elizabeta, and his best friend Garrett to name a few) because, really, they weren’t the draw for me as the writer. But would a reader have put up with such single-mindedness? I didn’t need to write a soap opera when a YA reader would have expected a supernatural romance with splashes of action and intrigue.
Basically, over the two years I toiled over Deepen (tinkering with the 80K draft I had compiled from October 2009 to December 2009), I didn’t make a lot of headway in crafting an actual, y’know, book. There were a lot of scenes where the characters just felt like talking heads, and I didn’t know how to remedy the romance plot line without it overwhelming the supernatural aspects that made the story more high-concept. Even the threat upon the town didn’t seem to weigh heavy enough with high stakes.
It was a dull story; I can’t candycoat that.
But still I had some kind of mad hope that the pieces would one day click together and a proper book would be born from all the chaos.
Why are you telling us all this?
In a roundabout way, I guess I’m a living example of how you can have “good” ideas but still not have the capacity to make them into something actually concrete. I graduated from high school in 2009 with the shiny thought that I’d use my lack of direction—not college-bound, still at home—to tackle writing a novel. I bought my first laptop on my 19th birthday, and about a week later I was furiously typing away at Deepen.
It was thrilling to have the freedom to tell a story.
It was amazing to think, “This is it, this is it”—even though I can look back now and be utterly mortified at how happy-go-lucky I was about the idea that my first novel draft would be my first published book.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. Instead, all I have is a flash drive containing a half-dozen iterations of the same draft from 2009.
Despite the disappointment that I wasn’t going the fast-track to becoming a novelist, I’m glad I had Deepen. It was a rought time in my life overall—my mother endured a lengthy hospital stay in 2009, and I sat in many waiting rooms with my laptop that year—but I had this escapist dream that maybe I could someday be a writer who made something of herself.
I’m still hoping, but we’ll get to that in future essays.
What’s the takeaway?
If you’re a hopeful novelist-to-be, don’t be married to the idea that your first drafts—whatever they are, no matter the genre—are going to be your first published works to share with the world. It’s easy to have an idea and run with it. It’s easy to get lost in the playground of your mind. Just don’t let that cloud your judgment over what can or could be.
It’s a wonderful thing to be a writer. It’s a wonderful thing to have big dreams.
But the actual journey could take much longer than you ever allowed yourself to believe.
Don’t get discouraged. Don’t get mired in self-doubt.
These things just take time.
I would extend these thoughts to people who are on other paths ahead in the journey: in the querying phase, in the submission stage, in the looming eye of a publication date, etc.
All you can do is to try and write the best stories you possibly can.
The rest—well, you can’t hope to control all the cogs in the machine.
Focus on your craft. Be deliberate. Make good choices.
Writing is a path with no real end in sight unless you give it up or go to the grave with your blood still running high with ink.
Enjoy the journey. It may be a long one, but I suspect it will be worth it.
I like the idea of a character like Fader, who's repressed emotions rear up as physical supernatural threats, resonates with me. As a recovering represser it feels like such a tangible metaphor. Maybe just a long short?
That's my dream/plan for my older gold mine of abandoned drafts. Turn them into shorts.