I’m learning more and more that, especially on the days when I feel stuck and don’t feel like writing, I should push through.
Today I was stuck… I knew the general direction of where I wanted the story to go, but I was missing clarity in some key events that are, I believe, core motivators for why things happen the way they do. I tried various methods to work these scenes out, but they’re still too foggy…
There was a moment today during which I simply wanted to close everything and stop. I was being flooded by a wave of doubt, telling me I was no good at writing, and that my story has too many holes.
It’s the same feeling that always got to me in the past, and that, so far, has always managed to push me to give up on the story I was writing at the time.
But today, I was stronger than my previous self. I recognized the feeling for what it was and I decided to push through the doubt. At first the words didn’t want to come and every sentence felt bad. But I told myself that it didn’t matter, that I only needed to write a few paragraphs and that I could stop afterwards. All that mattered was that I didn’t let the doubt win.
Even though I felt out of it, I kept pushing.
And then, something unexpected happened. After I wrote the paragraphs I’d set out to, I reread them and I thought that they weren’t all that bad. So I wrote a little more, and then a little more. In the end I wrote a full scene.
It’s far from being my best work, and I know that it’s going to need lots of editing and fine-tuning. But now that it exists, editing and fine-tuning is something I can work on – which would not be the case if I had given up and not written anything.
And then, on top of that, while I wrote the scene, I suddenly knew what I wanted the next one to be. So I wrote that one too.
Just like the previous one, this new scene is still wobbly and imperfect, but it exists. And that’s what matters for now.
This writing session that started out with me wanting to drop everything, ended in me making progress in my novel. Progress that I’m very happy with.
I’m learning that, especially on the days when I don’t feel like it, I should push through and write, because it’s only by getting words down that the story can go on.