Right Before I Clicked Delete on this Whole Novel
it might still happen tomorrow
Hi Friends,
Have you ever gotten exactly the pep talk you needed right when you needed it?
Today I was having a bad writing day. You can track my bad writing days by GPS. I wake up and think “today I really need to go sit in a coffee shop and work.” Then I pack up my laptop, charger, and notes, and get in the car.
On the way to the coffee shop, I remember a package I need to drop off at UPS so I go to the UPS store that’s not super close to my house, but has convenient parking. And while I’m out there’s this return I need to make at another store, which I might as well do since that store’s right by Barnes and Noble, which has a good café I could work in, so I’ll head there. And by the time I get there I realize I’m hungry, but the food at Barnes and Noble isn’t the best, so … cut to 3 hours later when I get home with a bag of Taco Bell and a Starbucks, having run all my errands without ever having taken out my laptop. And this whole drive I’m just stewing over the problems with my book. Why isn’t it interesting? Why don’t my characters seem to want to go in the direction I need them to?
Today’s spiral started with reading the end of Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel this morning. The book itself was very good – high stakes, great characters, a total page turner – but what really got me was the acknowledgements – Wrobel graduated from the same MFA as I did, with the same thesis advisor, and this was her thesis! It was the ultimate jump scare ending.
So yeah, coming back to my little dead fish first draft I couldn’t help but consider it might be a good idea to abandon this book and start again with something more compelling. Like, maybe just another genre completely. Romance sounds good.
After I finished my taco bell, I put on the #amwriting podcast and played a procrastination level of Pikmin. I was spiraling like a new-agey lawn decoration at this point.
And the episode was “#402: How bad can a first draft be?” And it was exactly what I needed to hear today. So here I am, plugging away at my poorly boned weird little zero draft, with a little more hope it’ll turn out ok.
Wish me luck.
This Week I’m:
Reading: Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel https://bookshop.org/a/86116/9780593100073
Watching: House of the Dragon Season 2 – our long national nightmare of time jumps is over!
Listening to: #amwriting podcast (And thank you to Sarina Bowen, one of the hosts of #amwriting who took pity on a newbie to Thrillerfest and gave me lots of great writing advice, including the recommendation to read Darling Rose Gold. Sarina’s latest, The Five Year Lie, is next on my TBR).
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Thanks for reading!
Kayleigh