Maybe I just can't write...

I honestly thought I could do it - I mean, I still believe I can, but then why can't I seem to ever get my story right? I've reworked it about seven times now. The main characters are still there, but the story seems to always be messed up, or maybe I just can't tell it. I've been working on this since November.

Maybe it's time to take a break and work on a different story. Anyone else still having problems with their NaNo story from November?

It sounds like you're working this story to death. Let it go for a while. Let it breathe, give yourself time to get some perspective and some space to see it like a reader, and come back to it in a couple months. March is National Novel Editing Month--you could try doing that. But many writers, myself included, can't really work with their stories when they're fresh. I need at least a couple weeks, preferably a month or two, before I can really see it.

And in case you haven't been, save every draft. Every day, save your changes as a new document. That way, if you decide you like the old version better, you still have it.

Since I never edited a novel I probably can't give you much of an advice apart from letting it go for a while.
Also, do you have any test readers yet? Maybe some people could try and give you pointers to figure out when something doesn't seem to make sense or is hard to understand.
Maybe the story is already fine altogether without you realizing it yet?

I agree with itzika. Just let it be for a while, and save all of your changes separately. (One document per draft). I have only just started editing a short story that I wrote back in November (finished, rather). And, only just reread this year's Nanonovel. I have not even started the rewrite yet. Like any painter will tell you, sometimes you just have to step back and look at the whole thing. As writers, we do that by not reading or writing that particular story for a few weeks.

Since November? Of what year? I've been working on my work in progress off and on since November of 2002. I've turned it upside down, shaken it a few times, ripped it to pieces, put it back together, ripped it up again, thrown out characters, added new characters, tried different story arcs . . .

Maybe your story needs more time to simmer and ripen in your mind. Maybe you need to look at it from another angle.

These things take time. I knew that when I started this would probably take about ten years to complete.
It's been nine years, and now it's starting to come together.

I won't bore you by talking about the bilge I see in books 2 and 3 of my trilogy right now. To put it simply, they're terrible right now. You can arguably say I've been working on book 2 for at least 2 and half years (yes, before I wrote book 1) and it's still a pile of bilge. Like everyone else has said, leave it alone for a while. I take extended breaks from book 2 (mostly by working on book 1 and sometimes book 3). Then I'll go in every once in a while and see what I should do to fix it. I finally hit my answer, which is I need a total rewrite. But that may not be your answer. So relax, do some guilty pleasure writing (when I need a break I write fairy-tale ideas, even though they go nowhere they're fun to pretend I'll write someday), and let the novel tell you what it needs for itself. Maybe you'll look again and see that character X is throwing everything out of wack and needs to be cut, or maybe you need a new POV, or whatever else the problem may be. Like I said, let the novel tell you.

...don't remind me.

My last year's novel is telling me I did the stage direction all wrong. The plot, where it's formed, is okay, it just needs to be told differently.

For example, instead of dropping the hint that something weird would happen that day by having them turn to a random machine giving random signals when time portals opened up (with no explanation), I put a scanning device in my heroine that formerly belonged to another character after he gave it to her, giving them a direct-link connection so every time she would use the scanner, he'd know (and wonder why, since he wasn't using his device; the perils of time-travel duplicates).

In another case, I wrote a scene involving breakfast, and I realize I put too many characters in the scene and it overpopulated things. So the characters demand I drop one guy out (who didn't add much anyway) and then revise the scene to better showcase the characters and the relationships between the people who are really important.

Or one time, I didn't like the fact that I put an infodump early on, and elected to either show the whole thing as a flashback or to drop it entirely and keep it a mystery. But choosing the latter would only mean buying time as I'd have to explain it all later.

But those are the easy fixes. Once I joined all three of my main characters together as a team, I felt that all the test scenes I envision with them makes at least one a third wheel at all times. Apparently I have no idea how to handle a trio; I just have three duos that alternate while one warms the bench. I also can't think of many good interactions with the antagonist that would elaborate on the complexity of the conflict. Many of the test scenes themselves aren't set in stone since they're basically fillers that buffer the first act from directly leading into the third (and I can't drop the second act all together, the story would make no sense and there's be no chances for character development). Which means I've got a giant hole in my story and every time I try to fill it, it just falls apart.

Those middles are the toughest parts for me. I still can't think of a good middle in the story where my forest ranger hero slowly gets wise to the oncoming alien zombie invasion in his neck of the woods (well, the latter half of a middle, anyway, the first half is pretty solid). The short story I'm planning the meantime also needs a middle, since the beginning is "I'll prove to you that my robot friend is real, I'm bringing him to school with me on Friday" and the ending is "Wow. He was so upset that he flew away". What happened that day that made him so upset is still a mystery.

My guess is that if you're spending a lot of time rewriting and not getting anywhere, you aren't really sure what your story is supposed to be. You may not know your characters well enough, which would mean that you can't give them believable motivations for what they're doing. You may not know where you want the story to go, or have no idea how to get there. And, I hate to say it, but a lot of people are trying to stretch a short story into a novel, and that usually doesn't work.

God, I'm in the same place. I've been working on this story for two years now and I still feel like I'm at square one. I'm not too worried about the actual quality of the prose right now, because I know I can refine that any time. Something is fundamentally wrong with the story. AGAIN. I think my problem is that I'm trying to force a nice simple plot to get too complex. I feel like I have good, solid characters, but I don't know exactly what all their roles and relationships are, either.

I feel like I'm playing with Legos at this point, and trying too hard to use every single block that's been set in front of me. I need to pull apart all these blocks, study them, and find a more streamlined, interesting way to put them together.

And while I'm a little intimidated by the thought of starting at the bottom AGAIN, I'm starting to think that's my only option now. *whine*