: Re: Restarting a Novel In 2015 I wrote the first two thirds of a novel (as part of NaNoWriMo). I stopped at that point because I had written the 50,000 words required for the 'competition' but

@Jessie137

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Lastly - the world seems to have moved on and the issues in my novel don't seem as relevant to a readership and they once were…

Respectfully, it may be the author who has moved on (but yes, I think for many people the world has changed so I am not saying your point isn't valid). You have something of length that can be analyzed. That's an opportunity to become a better writer in itself.

What I feel will be more productive is to analyze your 3 year old novel and perform a project post-mortem – also called a project retrospective. It is a process for evaluating the success (or failure) of a project's ability to meet its goals.

I offer a counterpoint to the "finish it to set good writing habits" answer. Finishing a novel is more than filling in all the words. You hit the NaNoWriMo writing goal 3 years ago, and you don't need to prove you can hit a word goal or a write to a deadline. In fact, I find it curious that once you hit the word count you dropped it.

NaNoWriMo seems like a good way to power through some pants writing. I humbly suggest that pants writing is never going to be more than a first draft (I am ok with other writers disagreeing, I speak as a reader). The other 2 options (finish it or start over) are each valid depending on what you want to do with the story, but either way I think you will be better off doing a post-mortem first.

3 years is safe distance to critically review your writing style, prose, characterization, intent, pacing, etc. You may find the topic no longer interests you, or you may discover some new inspiration from the emergent themes and tone. At the very least you may discover something about what kind of author you were back then vs the kind you want to be in the future.

You might also at least outline the missing 3rd based on the post-mortem, with an eye to making the story stronger than you'd originally planned. I am trying not to use judgement terms like "fixing" the novel, especially if it is being re-written or left un-finished. Old writing is not "broken". You might discover you have changed, or that there are some great moments there that you would like to recycle or improve on in the next novel.

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