Fellow angler,

Writing is hard.

As evidence, I’ll offer a peek behind the curtain here and share that I rewrote that first sentence six times. I moved it into the second paragraph once and I twice moved it under a (now-deleted) heading. In the end, that was still the best I came up with. Writing is…hard.

It’s pretty mid for an opener. Plus, you already know it. According to the internet, I’ve talked about this fact since I started this blog almost two years ago.

In my widely unread second post, I said that the primary challenges of writing are mental. I was talking about the hard work of getting yourself to show up and write consistently, without thinking too much about all your doubts and your perfectly legit reasons for doing something else instead.¹

I briefly found incredible success with showing up to write regularly. I wrote many thousands of words and, as my five long-time readers know, I finished a first draft of my first novel. Unfortunately, that’s when I ran into a fresh issue.

Voices in my head

Part of me wanted to dive right into editing my draft. I knew it would take a lot of work and I wanted nothing more than to get this novel finished so I could find an agent, yada yada, and make some MONEY off all this work. But I couldn’t get myself to edit.

I know some writers (maybe many) suggest that when you finish a draft, you shouldn’t think about it for a while. Put it aside. Write something else. Cleanse the palette. Then you can write the second draft with fresher eyes.

In particular, I know Stephen King likes to let his drafts sit for six-ish months (to the point that he forgets what he wrote). And whatever critical reviews one may have regarding the quality of King’s books, no one can deny that the man has nailed down a process for churning out sellable books.

So I decided to think about one of my many other writing ideas. The issue was that I would be thinking about some other idea, [cue the TikTok sound] when all of a sudden I hear this aggravating, grating voice…saying hey, don’t forget about that first draft.

I’d write something for another story but my mind would say, oh right that’s like the idea for that draft you wrote. The first draft for that novel. The novel written specifically to be the first one you finish.

In one sense, this was useful. Over the past six-ish months, I have thought through some of the plot and character issues I knew I’d need to fix in edits. Big success.

In every other sense, this annoying voice in my head has made it difficult to write anything else. And it’s not like I’m actually dying to edit that first draft. The few times I looked at it, I got tired and decided that I should not look at it right then.

I was able to do a little writing, but it wouldn’t last long. This is a big part of why my last post wasn’t sent until [NUMBER CENSORED] weeks after the previous post.

The good news is that I’m healed.

Looking back, I see that I had some stubborn questions that needed to be answered before I could fully put the draft out of my mind. It wasn’t as smooth as some writers make it seem in their perfectly edited memoirs, but once I addressed my questions, my mind was at ease. Maybe I’ll be able to work through those questions faster with my next novel. Or maybe I’m just slow and this will become my process every time. I hope not. But sometimes life is like that.²

Writing is…fun?

Writing is still hard. But in the past few weeks, I’ve been able to think more seriously about my other ideas.

There’s another big novel-ish project that I’ve code-named (to myself, since I’m the only one who’s known about it) my Silmarillion. It’s currently a collection of characters, mythical creatures, and stories that will make up the extended universe I’m trying to create to connect all my novels. I’ve been thinking about this world for a while but haven’t written much down. Then last week, without intending to, I wrote 3,500 words (about seven pages, I think) of one character’s back story. It was a blast to write.

I’ve also started writing a couple of fun novellas. One is about a stray cat and a pigeon who become friends in NYC. Another is about a man who’s taking care of his dying father but goes crazy and makes a deal with a demon.

There’s more I could say but I’ll leave that for next week. The takeaway is that I feel like I’ve turned a corner. I feel confident that I can get back to regular writing and, when the time is right, edit my first draft.

Title song

I wanted to use a Tim Curry song (I won’t elaborate since I may use a song by him next time) but this title simply worked too well to change. Dolly is also, from everything I know of her, well-deserving of the accolade of having a title song on my blog. So please enjoy the Queen of Country.

Until next time,

Happy fishing!