Why I’m Rewriting My Novel (Again)

Abby Jaquint
3 min readApr 20, 2020

Fifth time’s a charm.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

When I was a sophomore in high school, I wrote what I thought was going to be the next Great American Sci-fi Novel.

I have recently reread my first draft of this book, and, to put it bluntly: no one in their right mind should ever have to read a book that bad.

During my junior year, I decided that the book was terrible, and I needed to rewrite it. So, I did.

That draft wasn’t good, either.

My senior year — you’ll never believe it — I rewrote the book for a third time, cutting out 3/4 of the characters and knocking down the word count from over 156,000 words (in the first draft) to a little more than half of that.

I did nothing with this book until I reread my third draft my freshman year of college, when I realized that — another shocker — it still wasn’t good.

I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I just give up? Clearly, it isn’t working.

Well, I wanted to give up.

But I had faith in this book, and I had faith in the story itself. I did not want to let it go.

So I didn’t.

I spent my freshman year of college rewriting it for a fourth time, and I was absolutely thrilled when I finished that draft. I loved…

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Abby Jaquint
Abby Jaquint

Written by Abby Jaquint

Novelist. 24. I write about writing and productivity. Check me out on Amazon or Barnes and Noble!