"Kill your darlings," they say.

"Delete the first ten pages and start the story there," they say.

"Get through a lot of terrible writing before you uncover the good stuff," they say.

"But I did all that, and it's still not done," you say.

As I sit here, staring at the third official draft of my novel, which I am about to rewrite completely for a second time, I begin to wonder how long I have to wait until the bad stuff is finally out of the way, or if it would be wiser to simply abandon the book now and start work on a novel with more promise.

It's been almost four and a half years since I decided to write my first science fiction novel, and ever since, it's been an uphill battle to even just make it readable. With all the pro-editing content I turn out, you'd think it would be easy--and enjoyable--for me to go in, make the fixes and get out. But that's not even close to true. If you have ever struggled with the same project for a long time, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Chapters go awry, characters act inconsistently, events flow at the wrong pace... there's no end to the mistakes. We begin to wonder why we ever loved this book at all.

With that in mind, l recently faced the choice of editing the book for a fourth time or finally letting it die. In trying to decide, I popped open my early planning documents and scanned my original plot ideas. Unsurprisingly, they drastically differed from what had actually come out on the page. Some of the ideas were good, but most were the wishy-washy daydreams of a highschooler. However, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was that one of the hugest plot points, the climax of the second half, was the same as I had originally wanted it to be.

I stopped to think about this. Almost everything else about the novel was different than I had originally intended. My main character was initially going to be 100% android living in a robotics lab and connecting with the human characters as a means to escape. In the latest draft, he is one of the few truly human characters connecting with the robots to escape (and for totally different reasons). Also, my first planning outline killed off certain characters who, in the new version, go on to live while other characters die. Everything had changed except this one part: my characters make it to a new location, meet a new character and then turn the story in a whole new direction.

It took me about three seconds to realize what had gone wrong. By sticking to my original wishes, I had forced my readers into the energy/flow of a solid arc only to throw them completely off by with this old climax. I destroyed all the tension, introduced convenient characters and then set them all off with no real new information while still expecting the stakes to remain high. What was supposed to be interesting had simply tanked.

In summary: ew.

Now I had a new choice. I could either stay true to my original notes but try to rework the flow to be more believable, or I could ditch everything and start all over. Over the years, I had grown so devoted to this particular plot that I had disregarded a lot of in-story logic to make it happen. I wanted this character in the book since 2013--they had been key at one point, surely they could be again. Wasn't this what I had wanted when I started? What would be the point of even having the second half if this character wasn't involved?

But then I looked at the rest of the book again. My main character was a whole new person. His friends had become rounded and developed instead of flat foils. My antagonist at last had real drive and motivation. And the best part was, at 110,000 words, and despite still needing a lot of work, the book was happening. So if I wanted to make it keep happening, if I wanted to finish, I needed to be drastic.

In essence, I needed to betray my own novel.

Instead of clinging to my original ideas and granting certain characters the life I had once thought they deserved, I simply cut them out. This streamlined the plot. It gave my characters extra challenges and pushed them into even more dire circumstance. Plus, I also got a bonus idea that gave me another idea for a whole new ending entirely.

Of course, there's still mountains of editing to do. All the little details need to match up perfectly, and I want to eradicate about 30% of all current dialogue. But on the whole, my novel has fresh influence. As much as it hurts to betray my younger self, my older self is proud of me. My novel will be better because of this. (And I still have all the old documents saved. Wouldn't want to delete any of that old stuff, no matter how cringe-worthy!)

So now to you. If any of this sounds like you--the struggling, the battling, the unending fight with your own writing--take hope. If what you need is to betray yourself, then try it. Save the old documents just in case, and see where the new version takes you. Even if it feels like you're wasting time on a project that has already eaten so much of your life, you never know if this will be the big break that changes everything.

All books deserve to be finished. If we must be traitors to finish them, then that's simply what we must be.