2 - How to know when it's time to shelve a WIP

This can vary a lot, but there's three major reasons that have occurred with the works I've shelved (three, all of which I'd worked on for at least six months, many more that had shorter life spans).

The first is a lack of interest. If working on a WIP starts to consistently feel like a chore, and I'm having a harder and harder time feeling for the characters and the world, something's not right. Sometimes this can come from burnout from other aspects of life, but sometimes it's just that I lost passion in the work. Writing's supposed to be fun, and once it's not, it's time to figure out what's up, and sometimes that means trying something new.

Another reason is just outgrowing a work. As I'm writing, the concepts and the story start to feel more juvenile. Some of this can be fixed with editing, but some of it’s baked into the bones of the story. Working it out would mean completely changing the story. Eventually continuing a work feels like being trapped in a younger version of yourself rather than pushing forward.

The final reason (and it can be kinda devastating so I have a section on this farther down) is the realization that a story is not going to help you achieve your writing goals, or worse, will even hinder them. This one won't be as applicable to everyone as the other two as everyone's writing goals vary, but if your goal is to eventually get published/make a job as an author, you may be confronted with this.

3 - How to shelve a work if you've lost interest or outgrown it

The thing about both of these scenarios is that it's a slow progression. If you've identified that you're declining in your attachment to it, you're probably approaching the ability to set it aside and move onto other projects.

One of the first steps is evaluate what is making you stick with it. If you haven't yet shelved it, there's bound to be a reason. Sometimes it's one that holds a lot of merit, and may constitute just taking a break, or in some cases pushing through. Other times, it's not really a great reason, and coming to terms with that is an emotional step to put the work aside.

If you can't bring yourself to move on because it feels like quitting, even though it feels like it's the best decision, find a goal to work toward. That goal will be something much smaller than publishing the work, but it will still help give a sense of completeness. For example, finishing the draft, or even just the act you're on. Sometimes, seeing an end point can be detaching enough that you just... shelve it. Other times, you get to the end point, and decide: is this the end for the WIP, or have I regained enough interest that I actually want to go farther? Both are equally good decisions.

I have found that it's often like a sudden decision that comes after a long period of questioning. I might go for weeks thinking should I or should I not? Over and over and over. Then one day, I just decide to stop working on it, and that's that. It's just the moment when the last of my active emotional attachment finally dissolves.

4 - How to shelve a work when you realize it's not going to help you achieve your goals

This was the situation I was in when I shelved my no-longer-current WIP, which I intended to traditionally publish. It was a sort of assassin-y story and there were elements of it that were loosely based off of Natasha Romanoff's story (Marvel), though not enough by any stretch that it could be considered fanfic. Then the Black Widow movie came out, and apparently Marvel had the exact same idea I had, and suddenly, it looked like my story was a huge rip-off of that one. As it was, huge swaths of the story overlapped. All of this meant that not only was publishing my WIP a long shot because it was a YA sci-fi, but also it was competing with the mega-company that is Marvel/Disney. The chances of even getting an agent plummeted, and then there was the fact that if I did get one, and I got published, I would be basically throwing away my debut because of diminishing returns, and because anyone who read my book would also be in the target audience for Marvel, and would almost certainly see the similarities and write my story off for a rip-off. Not a great situation to be in.

So the first thing to do? Give yourself permission to feel all the big emotions that come with this kind of heartbreak. It hurts really bad, and it's okay to experience that.

Next thing. Evaluate. Is this it for the story, or is there anything else you can do with it? I can't publish it as a book, but there's nothing stopping me from posting it online and still sharing it with people.

Figure out what the end point is going to be. It could be finishing the story even though it doesn't accomplish what you originally set out to do (though this is something to do if it will genuinely bring you joy, not because you feel like it's something you owe). It could be doing something like the other scenario and finding a more artificial "finish point" to still get a sense of closure and accomplishment from the WIP.

5 - The freedom that comes from shelving a work

The obvious thing is that if you weren't enjoying what you weren't enjoying what you were writing before, you're done!

Shelving a work is an open space to work on whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy, you can do it. The starting stages of a WIP are always the most exhilarating, and this is where we all return whenever we pick up a new project.

Given that I was dead set on finishing this book, I decided to ignore the advice, tell myself it did not apply to me. That I would get through it without having to do anything that drastic. As it was, I had 44 abandoned WIPs behind me, some already some 20k words long. I was not about to make Project Toxin the forty-fifth.

And yet now, some eighteen months later, I’m doing exactly what I told myself I didn’t need to do. I’m doing what I decided was unnecesary for my WIP. The first major edit was to cut my current inciting incident and write a completely new one. The second edit is to combine or split the scenes that needed it, or to make a noticeable change in almost every one of them. The third edit is to cut rewrite the latter half of the third act.

So what changed? Primarily, my perspective. By the time I finished the first draft, I had come to terms with the fact that there were some major things that needed changing, and that didn’t work for my story. I was ready to accept that they needed fixing, and some of the fixes would be more drastic than I had thought when I had first started.

The other thing was it wasn’t as intense as I had originally thought. When I planned my rewrites, I recreated my outline in the same style as I had prior to my first draft. And then I started writing. It didn’t feel any different to my first draft, other than the fact that the content suited my story better. I also didn’t realize that I was basically rewriting my story until halfway through Act I. I was going through the outline, first rewriting the parts that needed to be rewritten, then going through the scenes that would be kept. For those, I had a split-screen. On one side was what I already wrote, the other was for the scene with all the edits. That side started blank, but I basically rewrote the scene using what I had already written as a guide. 

This is what the advice means when it comes to rewriting - it’s not about taking the same WIP idea from memory and restarting. It’s taking what you already have - a rough block of marble, if you will - and refining it to something that more resembles the end goal.

The underlying lesson is this, then: It is okay if you’re not ready to hear advice. It is okay to save it for later. The first draft is like learning how to walk. If all you get is voices telling you that you can’t hold onto a chair or guiding hand if you want to be able to move on your own, that will be overwhelming and disheartening. After all, you’re still figuring how to move your feet infront of you.