I’ve been trying to write a book since preschool. Not the same book, thankfully, but despite my numerous ideas over the years, some with extremely fleshed out plots and others that are more a collection of miscellaneous “vibes,” it’s never resulted in anything more than at most 130 pages of disjointed writing with a few gold nuggets buried within. That’s how things are meant to be when writing a novel—the first draft is just for getting the story on the page, whatever it looks like, and subsequent drafts can focus more on things like character development, consistent pacing, and poetic prose. However, when I was a precocious writer constantly being lauded by adults for my talents, I became beholden to the idea that whatever I wrote had to be perfect on the first try, and no editing or revision was necessary or even allowed. I know now that this is a misconception, one that I’ve heard has also impacted other writers both beginner and experienced, but it took me years to unlearn, and I sometimes feel myself slipping back into this headspace, leading to me not wanting to write at all.
A big part of my planning process is creating supplementary resources like Spotify playlists, Pinterest boards, and Notion databases about my idea to help me organize my thoughts and create a more vivid sense of the world my novel takes place in and the characters that live in it. I can spend as much time as I want developing these, but there is truly no substitute for getting words on the page. I know this as well as I know that the odds of becoming a famous or even financially viable author are slim. That doesn’t stop me from picturing myself signing copies of my bestseller at a huge event right after the announcement of a forthcoming movie adaptation deal, and it doesn’t stop me from opening my draft document and doing everything but writing. I used to be able to fill notebooks with chronologically written scenes full of witty dialogue and compelling action, but now, I hesitate to get started, and my writing sessions clock in significantly fewer words than in the past.
I like to joke that it’s because I’ve developed more taste and better opinions since then, but if I’m honest with myself, the more likely suspect is the fact that I’m scared of failure, and writing nothing feels like a way to prevent failure as an outcome. It’s tricky because I’m not even exactly sure what I view as “failure”—writing a first draft I’m not proud of? Not getting a six-figure book deal? Getting published but not getting good sales or press? Truthfully, the only real failure would be giving up, as cheesy as it sounds. While I can confidently say I haven’t given up on writing a book in theory, I’ve given up on so many half-started drafts that could have been revised instead of abandoned. Each time I restart a draft, whether I’ve taken a break from one idea to switch to another or just dived into the same idea in a different way, I convince myself that this will be my first completed draft, and I’ll type out the words “The End,” do some quick edits, submit it to an agent, and be on my way to the top of the New York Times’ bestseller list before I have the time to blink. But inevitably, I lose the drive that I had for the first couple of chapters, and I can’t find my way past it. I have found that highlighting everything except for my current paragraph in black has been helpful so that I can’t waste time rereading my old writing, and I often write out of order so that I’m not limited by a scene that’s giving me difficulty. But as helpful as these techniques are, I’m still sitting here writing this article, no completed novels to my name.
I’ve been struggling with the fact that this is my number one dream and has been since childhood, but I somehow don’t have it in me to actually get it done. I’m pretty involved in the happenings of the publishing world, and I know that in recent years, there have been several young authors who have gotten major book deals and lots of attention, which has made my insecurity spike in the past. But the reality is that I’m not these people, and whatever conditions that let them reach these points aren’t currently available to me, so the comparisons are moot. Not only that, but being as picky as I am about books, it’s likely not all of these authors have created work I would even want to emulate. Still, they’ve managed to get drafts done, and I haven’t. They’re proof that the task of writing a novel is not impossible.
I have to keep discovering practices that help me get words on the page and minimize the distractions that keep me from doing so, which I’m confident I can accomplish. It would just be nice if it was a more straightforward, less taxing process, but as they say, nothing good comes easy.