Betts,
I want to throw up and cry—figuratively. I have been working on a story for a while now, plotting, and I still have no clue what version of it should be told. I don’t know what it wants to be and giving up when I have put so many hours in is something I really don’t want to do.
that's a very frustrating feeling, anon, and i'm sorry you're going through that. i wrote a newsletter a few months ago about the nature of a project as a whole and how i got some comfort with putting hundreds of hours into something knowing nothing will come of it.
you really only have two options: you keep writing or you stop writing. this decision doesn't have as high of a stake as it seems. both are a good thing to do. if you keep writing, you'll figure out what the story wants to be. if you stop writing, you'll figure out what the story wants to be. take the elevator or the escalator; both will get you where you need to go.
if you keep writing, you'll probably end up with however many words of a formless thing. i've come to call this the "self" draft. it's the story you have to tell yourself to learn the story. often, the "self" draft becomes the "other" draft: the story you translate from your individual experience of writing to a wider audience. not all stories begin with a self draft, but some do, and they're often the most painful to write, because they involve rewriting them into something else. until recently i believed that process involved creative concession, but in rewriting my own novel now knowing what it is, i'm finding that although maybe less than 10% of the first working draft will make it to the next, i don't feel as though i've sacrificed anything. if anything, i feel relieved that the themes and aesthetics that were so important to me at the start are made even clearer now.
if you stop writing, one day a while from now, a month or a year or longer, you're going to be minding your own business, cooking dinner or watching a movie or something, and suddenly realize you know what this story wants to be. and that feeling will be so good that it'll balance out the awful feeling you're having now. it's like planting a fruit tree--you just have to let it grow a while, and have faith that it will one day bear fruit.
