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spryngI finished a draft of my WIP on Monday.
That doesn't sound like much -- writers finish drafts all the time!! -- but this is the first time I wrote all the way through to "the end."
I have struggled with this story since the pandemic hit, and all my spare time evaporated. Because I never really had a good chunk to work on it each week like I did previous books (funny how working part time actually helped with writing TPA and TUC) and then there was a pandemic, and then we moved cross-country, and then we had a child, and then all my coworkers were out for three months, and then my wife taught a virtual class and she could barely keep up with it even when she was staying up until 2am every night, and then we got COVID, and then the baby stopped sleeping at night, and then my wife started having mysterious symptoms, and then my coworker took 3 months off during our busiest time of year AGAIN, and then we found out why my wife has mysterious symptoms, and then the baby decided 5am was a perfectly cromulent time to wake up --
There would be a break, occasionally. A solid 1-2 weeks where I could slip just far enough into the book to make progress. I think it was Hank Green who said that he needed to think about his book at least once a week to keep working on it and not fall out of the story, and yes: same. Every time I went a week without being able to write because of *gestures above* it felt like starting all over again.
So it's been a struggle and on top of all that there's been some serious identity questioning throughout. As in, can I write? Should I? With everything going on? When I'll never reasonably make a living from it? When my first books flopped so hard? When the idea of publishing doesn't really feel good anymore? What's the point when there are so many better authors than me who struggle for marketing attention? When so many midlist authors who'd been doing well enough are being shunted to the side by their publishers?
When it takes me three years to write one 130k book because I literally cannot claw back any more time for writing, how the hell do I expect to survive the actual deadlines of the editing/copyedits/proof stages of publishing?
I don't have the answers to the publishing questions -- and even now hesitate to update my agent -- but I think I've proven well enough that I'm not going to stop writing. Can't stop.
Which is strangely... a relief.
And now I have this mess of a draft, which is a Frankenstein's monster of first drafts and third drafts and fifth drafts, and maybe... maybe I can make something of it.
I just hope it doesn't take me another 3 years.
That doesn't sound like much -- writers finish drafts all the time!! -- but this is the first time I wrote all the way through to "the end."
I have struggled with this story since the pandemic hit, and all my spare time evaporated. Because I never really had a good chunk to work on it each week like I did previous books (funny how working part time actually helped with writing TPA and TUC) and then there was a pandemic, and then we moved cross-country, and then we had a child, and then all my coworkers were out for three months, and then my wife taught a virtual class and she could barely keep up with it even when she was staying up until 2am every night, and then we got COVID, and then the baby stopped sleeping at night, and then my wife started having mysterious symptoms, and then my coworker took 3 months off during our busiest time of year AGAIN, and then we found out why my wife has mysterious symptoms, and then the baby decided 5am was a perfectly cromulent time to wake up --
There would be a break, occasionally. A solid 1-2 weeks where I could slip just far enough into the book to make progress. I think it was Hank Green who said that he needed to think about his book at least once a week to keep working on it and not fall out of the story, and yes: same. Every time I went a week without being able to write because of *gestures above* it felt like starting all over again.
So it's been a struggle and on top of all that there's been some serious identity questioning throughout. As in, can I write? Should I? With everything going on? When I'll never reasonably make a living from it? When my first books flopped so hard? When the idea of publishing doesn't really feel good anymore? What's the point when there are so many better authors than me who struggle for marketing attention? When so many midlist authors who'd been doing well enough are being shunted to the side by their publishers?
When it takes me three years to write one 130k book because I literally cannot claw back any more time for writing, how the hell do I expect to survive the actual deadlines of the editing/copyedits/proof stages of publishing?
I don't have the answers to the publishing questions -- and even now hesitate to update my agent -- but I think I've proven well enough that I'm not going to stop writing. Can't stop.
Which is strangely... a relief.
And now I have this mess of a draft, which is a Frankenstein's monster of first drafts and third drafts and fifth drafts, and maybe... maybe I can make something of it.
I just hope it doesn't take me another 3 years.
