Starting Anew...Help!
 

I have been working on this story, A Forgotten Blade, since I was in my freshman year of high school and I still haven't created an outline, a time line, or a general overview of the context. I have managed to have written 181 pages, however, and in those pages I have laid out the bare skeleton on the book on my mind. I have attempted to go back and flesh out the details, but I always manage to take large breaks in between each rewrite, so every time that I go back I want to add onto the text that I wrote previously. It seems an endless process.

Since I have my own computer once again, I am considering taking up this story once again in bulk, meaning that I want to sit down to take on the task of working on this thing in earnest, though I am not entirely sure how to begin. My previous attempts have all but failed, and I really don't know what to do besides them.

For those of your veteran writers, what is the best plan of action for jumping into a text once again? What strategies have worked best for you and how could I go about doing them?

Forgive me, I just looked at the other categories of the forum and I believe that this is wrong section. I'm so sorry that I did not look further.

well when I want to launch back into writing I like to spend about a week before hand reading books, so then when I sit down to write I am bubbling over with ideas and the whole process is much easier.

It's really weird, I've gone through almost the exact same thing, but now that I think about it, such situations occur frequently with authors who end up creating the very best stories. For instance, Orson Scott Card first started thinking about/writing his first ideas for his hit Ender's Game yeeeaaarsss before he finally sat down, fleshed it out, and it was adored.

Maybe knowing that kind of thing is the first step toward getting the bravery to start all over. It does take some courage, patience, and many deep breaths. But in the end it makes great writing.

I started my novel in my junior year of high school and have recently began polishing it, doing the great rewrite. I was over 200 pages written in but still not finished. I couldn't continue from where I left off because looking back, it was all wrong.

So I took a lot of time just getting to know my characters and getting in their heads again. (Mind you I love the character development part of stories, it's my favorite. And I also draw so a lot of this was constantly sketching them). I also started writing basic character biographies. They told the basic eye color, skin color, hair, height, their personality, and then how they felt about certain things that I planned to have happen in my story. I forced myself to do this for every single character.

That was my first big step toward gaining back the connection, the spark of passion for my dusty old story. After that I did brief outlines and drew some of the scenes like the castle and war formations for armies, etc. It started in doodles. Finally, I went back and flipped through my story (lazy me) and picked out the parts I felt should not change, be it whole scenes, a snip of dialog, or just the way a character felt when something occurred. This helped me solidify my outline.

After that, I just started.

I hope my personal ramblings helped. Please let me know if there is anything else that I can contribute!

I know what your talking about the same thing happens to me when i write. I write 2-30 pages of a story then start a new one. I just went back to the stories i started before and rewrote them so now there more orginized. I didnt type mine up though, if you type yours first you should sit down with a notepad and read your story all the way through. Take notes on parts you dont think you need, want to change, or just dont get. Make sure you put the page number an paragraph you might even want to hilight it. After you finish reading the whole thing go back to the parts you want to change and reread them. Think about how you want to change it and type it in. Dont delete the other part yet though. After you've done that for all the parts you wanted to change you should reread it again and make sure it makes sence. You might even want to get help from someone else to see if they liked the first version you wrote or the changed one. Delete whichever one you dont want.
Then write an outline with what happened so far and what you want to happen before the end. Orginize it into chapters, I'd also put how long i wanted the chapter to be just so I wouldnt go on and on and on. You should also write a paragraph or so with a really good discription of each character, each setting, each conflict, ect. After that you can go write more to your story. Make sure you reread everything you write and make sure it makes sence its alot easy to fix later if you do that now.

I am still having this problem a lot, but the thing I do when I am trying to work out more details or get motivated again is I try to remember what inspired this story in the first place or what had me so excited to write this story.

Once I have captured the central idea and my passion for it, I will usually try to think of another cool situation, though it may be completely random or unrelated, and then try to work it into the story. That way I don't have to think too hard about what specific details I would have to include.

It is always good to share it with other people too, because sometimes you will find that they would like to know more about and what things they really liked. It is always encouraging to know that someone likes a part of what you did.

When i meet this problem i just re-read my story. It helps me get back in touch with my characters and gets my head back in the story. Depending on what time of the day, after re-reading the story, I'll go back to my orginal notes(i always have notes:P) and look through them so I can get even more in touch with my world. If i have anything i want to change, I do it in the notes first before touching my story.
Of course everytime i get a story idea, i quickly make character profiles, an simple outline( one that i can change easily if it doesn't work), and a small summery of what the story is about (These are my notes). After that i start to write.