My May 2024 Reflection on What It Means to be Writing and Creating Full-Time
It's the last day of May, and I can say that I wasn’t a writer this month. I wasn’t the aspiring novelist. I wasn’t who I left my job to be.
I know the reasons why. It doesn’t make this any easier.
To be a writer means sitting down, putting pen to paper or keys to keyboard, thoughts to a blank surface until it’s dredged with ink and ideas. I think about this somedays, how—from February to April, Monday through Friday—I could thoroughly, confidently claim that I am a writer because I wrote for three to four hours a day, my mind often tapped out by noon. On the weekends, I have a harder time claiming this. I might write occasionally, a short story, or a scrolling read/edit through my book, but honestly, my mind needs a break. My muscles, they need their off day. Is there a protein shake for the mind I can take, a foam roller that I can massage the tension out of it. No? What about herbal tea? You’re telling me, “Just don’t stress”? I’m getting into herbal tea, and I can’t not stress. It’s part of my identity.
I don’t claim I’m a writer on the weekends, but I still know I am a creative. In May, I reminded myself of that. Even when my fingers weren’t at the keyboard, I was being creative.
In May
To be a creative is to create. In May, I did that in different ways. I spent more time away from my apartment in the concrete jungle of DFW than I did in it. I went to North Carolina, helped my in-laws work a catering for an entire week, running around, taking people’s dirty forks and washing dishes, making sure there was water in people’s hands if they wanted it or that the margarita machine was working.
I came home, had a three-day break from my next out of state expedition. Did laundry. I think I even slept in. Tried to write, but I didn’t have the energy, so I did freelance work, and the story I was evaluating didn’t get my energy levels up (that often happens in publishing, when you’re reading the slush pile. Be very careful). I couldn’t find the groove again, so I ended up editing Part I of my novel that I finished (in a much slower time than I wanted) and looking at different freelance jobs to apply for.
I come back from NC on Mother’s Day, and come Thursday, I’m on a plane, heading for Virginia to visit my sister for ten days. We land at two in the morning eastern time. We go to colonial towns, Yorktown and Williamsburg, drink coffee at both. There’s a candy shop in Williamsburg where I eat a cookie dough truffle. Sunday, we scream our heads off at Busch Gardens, riding the Griffin and the Pantheon. I see birds in the aviary. Birds scream at me.
Sometimes I wish I was a bird, and screaming at humans that pass me by would be acceptable. People would blame the human that made me scream, and not me.
We had picnics, went to a ju-jitsu class, made challah bread that didn’t bake together so it all came off as individual pieces (didn’t braid it tight enough, but at least it was good to dip) and spent our evening at Virginia Beach where the water was sixty-five degrees and the outside weather seventy-five, sun going down. In all, I cooked a lot, ate a lot, visited places, and free read for the first time in a month. Two whole books, done in a week. I could’ve cried at the prose if I wasn’t so tired.
I created memories. I bonded with my in-laws in our Airbnb in NC and working beside them for ten-plus hour days. I thoroughly explored the place my sister thinks that she’ll never come back to Texas for. I can’t blame her. It’s pretty up there, beach and mountains at her disposal within a two-hour distance. Beats the concrete jungle.
I can give myself a handwave, because I’m absorbing moments. These moments, later on, maybe will become pieces. Nonfiction if I have the memory of them still; fiction if I don’t but want to pluck an emotion or experience from, then turn it into a story. Maybe one of them will be accepted by a lit journal.
I’m creating, enhancing, deepening relationships and life experiences, which is what all writers need. Sometimes not spending life at the computer—figuring out fictional characters and fictional plots with real emotional problems—is good. As one of my favorite characters says in my novel, “It’s damn healthy.”
The protagonist in me, who needs to be driving my life forward constantly, wants to bite that handwave clean off. It’s a sinning hand. I should’ve been able to do it all. I should’ve been able to make memories and put pen to paper at the same time. Knowing that I needed a break, and that I took it, and that it might have worked and it might have been the best experience in the long run, doesn’t make my guilt go away. I’m in the after-effects now: Taking this break made me slide down the writer mountain, lost all my progress and rhythm. Now, I have to climb back up, and I’m not used to the altitude anymore. My body, it feels soft. I’m back in beginner mode, looking at the tools in my hands—oh wait, the tools are my fingers and my mind. I can’t ask for new ones and blame the lack of creativity on my “equipment” needing to be replaced. I’ll be replaced and so will my book before it’s even out if I keep this mentality.
The simple fact is: I needed the break. I needed to see beyond the screen, to read good writing, and feel that my story can measure up to the books on the shelf. I made money at the catering gig, money that I do need, and was finally the good sibling because I got to visit my older sister. But my mind is still tired. Editing—rewriting, basically—Draft 1 is proving to be a bigger struggle than I thought.
The Mountain of Draft 2
In April I sat down and made myself a schedule for my book. I was supposed to be done by June 1. I hate admitting that, knowing full well I wrote another blog article that said to not miss your own deadlines. True writers don’t miss their own deadlines.
That writer didn’t know that all the prose I wrote at the end of 2022 didn’t measure up to the prose I had written in 2023, so each sentence must be recast for consistent voice. A new character arc for Astra has to be recreated. I have to get into her wants and her mind, weave the theme in from the very first chapter so that the ending feels complete and catastrophic. I rewrote 50k words in April. I’m realizing as I write this post that I actually did do Camp NaNoWriMo in April, and I didn’t even track it because I felt like such a fraud.
At least I can say Part I is much better than it used to be. Though the book is still a 190k-word monster.
I’ve only slain 7k words from Part I. I need to cut another five thousand to meet my word count goal for the part (a total of 45k). I’m entering Part II, an almost 90k-word beast, and I need to edit, rewrite, it down to 55k, because there’s still a Part III and I’d like that to be around 35k, 40k for the max, to make the book a total of 140k (still too long. I’d love to tell my story in 120k). It needs to have a relationship built from the ground up, one that feels natural and not Stockholm-syndrome induced, or convenient to the plot.
But they don’t tell you in writing groups how to make characters fall for one another: either in the friendship way where the guarded FMC lets down her walls enough to give over trust and friendship once again, and the MMC starts to open his heart up to the idea of a relationship after being torn apart by a previous one. You only read that in books, and I’ve read some pretty convenient romances. I’ve read some romances that feel inevitable and yet turn out to be just friendships. All this to say: can I take the reader’s brain and wants for granted? Can I make the characters do silly little games and build relationships in ways that I need them to, just to break them at the end of the novel, and how much can I get away with. Most readers expect a little romance anyway in fantasy. I’d be meeting reader expectations. That’s what publishing is all about.
But I won’t get away with anything, because I won’t let myself get away with it. Because I’m too damn committed to making them feel natural, a slow-burn across multiple books, that friendship is the key in this book, and I want that friendship to do what I’ve felt happen to me before: end in backstabbing, internal-abysmal rage.
I apologize in advance if this tampers with your view of my book when it comes out. I’m also aiming to publishing it Earth Day of 2025 (Tuesday, April 22), and that date feels more unreachable the longer I work. I still need to have my publishing friends read it, go through their edits, and maybe higher another editor for a outside opinion. Then there’s copyediting. Then there’s proofreading. Then cover design. And let’s not forget that I have only 200-ish followers on Instagram and I don’t want to burn them out, so I’d love to get a few more by creating reels and stuff. I should really invest in Canva, or video editing skills, to get better. I’d love to reach out to authors for endorsements too—professionally, of course—especially those that helped me fall in love with reading again and I feel would enjoy my premise: Cashore, Scholte, Blake, Shusterman potentially. But I’ll be an indie author, and the fear that their agent won’t pass along my request even with the six-month lead time I want to give them makes me oysters up under my desk, and I don’t feel a pearl of originality or talent inside me.
In June
I’m going back to basics: putting on my Pomodoro timer, a 50:10, and saying to concentrate for three hours. Knock this out at the beginning of the day. Freelance is an afternoon endeavor, because I can be technical after I’ve been creative, but the other way around doesn’t always work. If I can get a chapter done in the Pomodoro time, fantastic. If I can’t, then I’ll finish it in the three hours tomorrow. Time is working more to my benefit now, especially when I have to craft whole sentences, paragraphs, and chapters anew. On Wednesday, I actually finished the first chapter of Part II.
When I made my schedule in April, I said to edit a chapter a day. Then I spent four days working on Chapter 1 alone. I felt like I’d shot both my hands and my schedule, bleeding with my stress-filled tears and creative blood. I knew getting this done by June 1 was an idealistic method. To what degree, I didn’t know. Now I do.
I tell myself to breathe in. Quality. I tell myself to breathe out. Over quantity.
A quality writing time, blocked off, focused, ear-buds in and instrumental music going, is much better for me than a quota of a chapter. Now, if I was truly editing (only looking for overdone details or a small typo), you bet I could do a chapter a day. I’d probably do two. But this isn’t editing. I can’t be the editor for my book. That’s not how editing works.
I’m doing what all writers do—rewriting. Recreating. And writing has a very different bar and process than editing.
I’m grateful for April, for all the work I did on Part I, rewriting and refocusing. It’s more compelling and feels more professional. I’m grateful for May, when life took over and I worked a week-long job, did some freelance on the side, visited family, and free read for fun. As I sit here, reflecting on writing and creating, their similarities and differences, I realize I needed that time. I needed to step away from the computer and make some memories that weren't just me sitting in my office. I needed the security of income, to ingest good writing and compelling stories to remind myself that every book is different and that I am not a sloth at home, doing nothing. Even when I wasn’t making money, my husband said I could never be a sloth because of how much I’m writing and reaching out for freelance roles. He values my work. I need to learn to be more like him.
In June, it’s quality. It’s writing and getting back into the rhythm of my book, feeling natural and loving watching my characters unfold in unexpected ways that I maybe didn’t draft out the first time but whose new scenes work so much better, and quicker, than before. When I’m done with Draft II, I’ll be giving myself an actual break while others read it. I’ll work on MFA application pieces, a screenplay for film festivals. I’ll go out and be spontaneous again, and I’ll create: memories or prose, it doesn’t matter. But I will create, and that will be enough.
Comentários