A Harsh Reality
Writing isn’t easy.
There, I said it.
But really, it’s hard. I don’t know in which ways you might think it’s difficult to write a book—maybe you think getting 100,000 words down is the hardest part, or maybe it’s putting yourself out there for people to judge something you spent months creating.
The reality is it’s all hard. Every single bit.
From plotting your story (and, really, there are a massive amount of books to help with this, but a lot of them offer conflicting bits of advice or information), to writing it and running up against your deadline and being behind, so you put your entire life on hold to try and get there but then realize you’re not loving the story and need to re-work it.
Up until now, the books have come fairly easily to me. I read a bunch of craft books on things like how to show and not tell (meaning you don’t say, “he’s embarrassed,” but instead you say “his cheeks turned pink and he looked away”) and how to craft better dialogue, but in my scattered brain, they all sort of jumble together and then I have a hard time grasping the concepts or remembering how to apply them.
So, mostly I rely on whatever comes naturally to me. I know I don’t like my couples to have misunderstandings, and I also know that once they’re together, I typically like them to stay together without anything internal ripping them apart. However, I don’t know that this is the most effective approach I could use to tell my stories.
There’s something to be said for sticking to the “beats” Gwen Hayes refers to in her book Romancing the Beat. The problem is I feel like if I do the things that most “experts” say create books people love to read, I’ll be stuck with stories I don’t love to write.
I try to avoid reading reviews because they kill my creative flow, but I did read one today on Goodreads for Playing Jericho. It was a 2-star review, and honestly, I felt like her comments were fair. My character development can always be better, but I haven’t figured out how to do better yet. Does that make sense?
I learn something new with every book I write, and I have no intention to quit writing, but sometimes I wish I could take a little hiatus and learn more about what the hell I’m doing, you know? Because I want to write stories that people love—the kind they can’t wait to recommend to a friend or a reader group. I don’t know that I’m there yet.
Then again, I am my own worst critic, so maybe I’m just holding myself to impossible standards. The truth is, I don’t think I am. I think I can do better, be better, and craft better stories with characters you love and want more of.
So, there it is. The thoughts running through my mind at this very moment: raw, real, and unfiltered. I didn’t edit this, I didn’t try to make it perfect, but I wanted you to see what it’s like to truly live and breathe your craft. It’s been a bit of a hard day writing Chased, and now I’m sitting here, in my dark writing cave wondering if it’s even any good at all or if I should scrap the whole thing and start fresh.
But, tomorrow’s a new day, editing’s a really amazing thing, and what’s important is that I just keep writing. After all, the only way to get better is to continue to practice.