It creeps! It crawls! It's....the slog!
OR: How I survive finishing one project and starting another.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve periodically had a dream in which I cannot run quickly. Sometimes it’s the standard nightmare fare, with an ominous threat that I need to flee. More often than not, though, I’m just trying to get somewhere fast, but I can only move forward if I go at a glacial pace. Sometimes, if I start out slowly enough, I can build up momentum, but as soon as I try to sprint ahead, the very air seizes around my legs and it’s like trying to run through hip-deep muck.
Several months ago, I finished the final draft of my interactive dark fairy tale, and then took a few weeks away from writing to refill my creative bucket. I read several books from my TBR, I bought a weaving loom and far too much vibrantly dyed roving, I baked bread, and in general just let myself putter and play until the other stories in my head started pawing at me to put them to paper.
But while I’ve since happily written pages (and pages and pages) of world-building lore and chapter outlines and character notes, dabbling into the sea story and a haunted blueberry farm romance and a few short fics, when I sit down to actually write any of them, it feels like this:
I spent close to three years of my life working on my fairy tale, from the first concept to drafting and then revising and tweaking until I’d taken this bizarre and convoluted idea and turned it into 72,000 words of immersive and twisting fantasy.
It was by far the most difficult thing I’ve written, both structurally and because much of the content came from a very raw place inside of me, and I am immensely proud of what I accomplished. But, going from the end stages of a polished story to those first bumbling steps of a new idea is a particular kind of frustration that leaves the door of doubt cracked open for all those imposter syndrome and critical thoughts to come slithering in.
Thankfully, when I can step back from the drama and despair that my writer-brain loves to stir up, I can remember that I’ve been here before, quite a few times, in fact. I’ve written other books and finished them and gone on to write vastly different and full stories. I’ve written short fiction, flash fiction, and poetry. I’ve written other novels. I’ve followed characters after they’ve dropped into my mind fully-formed and I’ve gone chasing after a world knowing only a single, compelling detail.
But just like my recurring dream, if I try to sprint ahead and jump into drafting expecting 1,000-word writing sessions, I’ll get hopelessly mired in the slog. I’ve learned over the years that for this part of the process, I need to build those muscles again. So I play around with a flash piece or two. Maybe I do a few writing prompt exercises. I aim for 100 words each time I write, which at this point might only be twice a week. And I force myself to let things be messy and incomplete. (By the way, if you’re one of those people who can hammer out thousands of words right off the bat, you have my unending envy, Wild Unicorn Writer.)
And then—and this is maybe the most challenging part for me—I pick a direction and stick with it. One WIP until I hit a milestone, whether that’s the first Act, the first 5 chapters, the first 10k words. It’s usually at this point I feel like Simon Pegg in Run Fatboy Run, but I keep going, a few hundred words at at a time. However long it takes me to break through the slog and get the story flowing. However long it takes to get comfy in that messy stage again.
Because it is messy, and there will be dead ends and plot holes, and sometimes you’ll have to scrap entire chapters or characters. But just as you should never compare your final draft to a professionally published book, you shouldn’t compare a final, polished draft to a fledgling one. It’s always going to be wobbly at first, but if you keep taking steps, eventually you’ll get your feet under you. And then just watch how you can run.
