Sometimes you put your heart and soul into a manuscript and it just doesn’t work out. Take counselling from Sophie Beal about the best ways of dealing with a writing breakdown

Some manuscripts don’t work, no matter how much time and energy you invest. Shelving a big project like a novel can be painful, remarkably like leaving a bad relationship. The good news for those who feel like they’ve been here before with an ex-partner: that experience could well help you now.

Denial

You’ve put everything into this novel: you care about even the villains; you’ve reworked the prose of those first few chapters over and over; read every pertinent piece of advice and attended workshops; crafted your synopsis to fit on exactly one page, but the rejections are piling up. Friends and family say you’re wasting your time.

You tell them Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife was rejected thirty times before an agent picked it up. That was successful enough to spawn a Hollywood film. We love each other, you say. It’s just a matter of working through our problems.

Possibly. Possibly not. If a novelist has sent chapters to a dozen agents and no one’s asked for the full manuscript, there’s probably something wrong with the submission.

Listening to other people’s opinions

It’s time to get professional feedback, or at least critique from other writers. When you receive it, be honest with yourself.

How much do you agree with the criticisms? Are they easy or difficult to put right? How much are you prepared to go through to make this novel work? Separate your feelings about your manuscript from yourself as a writer. In This is not a book about Charles Darwin, Emma Darwin writes about her failure to publish a third novel based on her famous ancestors. Emma is an award-winning author, a creative writing PhD and a sought-after teacher and book doctor. No one was questioning her ability to write, or the stories she had to tell – Charles Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood and Ralph Vaughn Williams hang on her family tree. A big-name agent had suggested the idea and gave her notes throughout the process. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t work.