I’ve been working on a novel for the better part of a month. Which sounds I guess like a hilariously short period of time, but it’s actually something of a record for me.
Creative work is hard to sustain, and I am guilty of starting far more stories than I can ever finish, often writing a chapter or two, a few thousand words, and dropping the story because it’s just too difficult and burdensome.
This project has been successful so far because I’ve been focused on exactly one thing: getting the story on the page. I wrote a detailed outline over the course of a couple days, and I bounced it off someone I trusted, and that little bit of extra effort on the frontend has made this project feel possible. I have a north star I’m aiming for, and when I go on tangents or get diverted I still know exactly where I am.
That’s not to say it’s easy though; I am trying hard to refine my voice as I write, and I can tell there are parts of the story that are clunky or forced. I feel a deep abiding sense that this whole thing might actually fucking suck and I won’t realize it until I’ve already typed thousands of words. I am tired, because creating a living breathing world full of people who matter is exhausting.
I hope this book actually gets somewhere; I want to believe I’ve earned it after all these years of false starts.