I wrote the wrong book

A Writer’s Ramble Episode

When the editor told me that she loved the memoir but it wasn’t what she expected, I knew something fundamental was wrong. I went through her notes, changing small things here and there, but her words kept coming back to me. It wasn’t what I expected. 

I attended a webinar with Jessica Brody that went over the Save the Cat method for writing novels and decided to put my novel to the test. The basic layout is as follows.

Act 1 - 20%

Act 2 - 60%

Act 3 - 20%

Mine looked more like this:

Act 1 - 50%

Act 2 - 35%

Act 3 - 15%

This means that the memoir is more focused on Act 1 when I intended it to be focused on Act 2. It makes the ultimate argument for the memoir completely different than I had wanted.

What do you do when you have written the wrong book?

I am left with a few options. I can publish as is and change my target audience and argument. I can try to alter the current manuscript to be a little more focused. Or I can rewrite it with the intended argument in mind. I am considering all these options. Rewriting at this point is disappointing, but so is publishing the wrong book. I will see how it goes. 

Although it’s kind of hard to believe I wrote the wrong book, I feel more prepared now to fix the issue. At the beginning of my writing journey, writing a book was this amorphous thing that I had no idea how to accomplish. Now I am equipped with strategies and people to consult to make this the best it can be.