I’ve had this idea for a short supernatural horror story for years, but never actually committed to writing it. I guess the idea of the thing was so pleasing to me, I didn’t want to risk ruining it by writing it badly.
But a few months ago, I wrote an entirely different story, and showed it to a friend of mine who is a fucking amazing author who had offered to take a look at anything I wrote, if I ever wanted his feedback.
So on this other thing (which is called The Magician’s Path), I just wasn’t sure if it worked. I wasn’t sure if it all held together, or if it even told the story I wanted to tell. I sent it to my friend, and told him that if he thought it sucked, it would be really useful and helpful if he could tell me why it sucked, so I knew where to focus on developing my skills as a storyteller. He didn’t reply for a few days, and I thought, “Jeeze, I guess it sucks even harder than I thought it did.”
Then he texted me and told me that he really liked it, and didn’t think it needed much work. He hadn’t replied to be because he had gotten busy. Let that be a lesson to all of us about the things we presume based upon incomplete information.
As it turned out, he was coming to LA, and he offered to come to Castle Wheaton and go over it with me, so I could understand what I’d written from a structure standpoint, a story standpoint, a prose standpoint, etc.
We sat in my kitchen and went through it (it’s not long at all, like 4000 words) and while he showed me things, I began to feel like I was more capable than I thought I was. My instincts were good, my ideas made sense, and while the draft didn’t exactly need anything, if I did a couple of things to it, it would help it be better.
I want to say that it was like learning to walk, but it was more like suddenly having the confidence to stand up and stop crawling. My friend unlocked this thing inside of me that I’d been holding back because I was so afraid of failure, and all these ideas that I’d had for years started clamoring around inside my imagination to get out and become proper stories.
I started and abandoned a couple of things, because they weren’t the right thing for me to be writing at the time, and finally settled on the thing that was a short story that became a novella that wants to be a novel and still really needs a good title. Neil Gaiman says that each thing you write teaches you how to write it, that you have to learn while you’re doing it, and that every story is different. While that thing was teaching me how to write it, it was also teaching me how to just write the idea I have, without fear or judgement, and keep going until it’s finished.
Around the second week of October, I had to write a really difficult scene in that story. Without getting too precious about it, I just had to walk away from it for a little bit, and my brain was all “Why don’t you write the swamp story, and release it around Halloween?”
There isn’t a swamp in the story anymore, but I was like, “Good idea, brain,” and I got to work. It ended up being more than I expected, and I didn’t come close to making that Halloween deadline. But I finished it on Friday, and I’ve been deliberately taking this weekend off from it, even though I really want to get back to work on it and do the rewrites.
I’ll probably finish the rewrites sometime next week, and then I’ll go back to the novel, which feels like it’s about 90% finished, because I want to finish the first draft of it by the end of the year.
When it’s finished, I’ll go back to my whiteboard and pick the next thing that’s going to go into the collection of short stories that all of these things have come out of, and if everything goes according to plan, I’ll have at least one book (and hopefully two) published early next year.
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waves pompoms from the Wil Support sidelines YAY! Finishing anything is a major accomplishment and taking time away before going back to edit it is always the right move. I can’t wait to see what your brain has come up with this time. 🙂
Your journey speaks to me quite a bit. Thank you so much for sharing it, and congratulations on your breakthrough!
I can totally relate to this. For years I have started to write things and abandoned them because I thought that they weren’t good enough. I finally hit a point where I’d come up with great ideas but couldn’t mentally flesh them out into a story. Just recently I became inspired to write fanfic and once I started the words kept coming. I finally, bravely, asked a friend who is a writer to read them on my blog and hope that he wouldn’t think they are total rubbish. He actually thought they were good and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on my blog from readers. I’m currently writing a story that came to me yesterday morning and I’ve managed to write over 6000 words and I’m still going.
I look forward to reading your novel. Will your short stories be published as a collection?
Novella to novel is quite a hurdle, Wil.
I love that you are moving forward with writing and are happy about it. That’s really great. I can’t write right now. Too angry about everything and I’m working on a solution for that. I’m the meantime I move on with crocheting. I’m half way done with a scarf and the colors are lovely and I can’t wait to wear it. I don’t even like scarves. I have a quote stuck in my head from aqua teen hunger force and like total eclipse from the heart, I’m not keeping this to myself.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JCZhlOJS09I
Excellent! I look forward to reading them.
Very excited to hear this. Not just because I’m interested to read them, but because I hear the joy and fulfillment in your post as you talk about creating something like this. Really excited and happy for you that you’re getting your creative juices flowing through writing again.
Also, as a daily blogger who took his inspiration from you two years ago (to create something every day), welcome back to the daily blog grind! I’m two years into it now, and I only have you to blame… er… thank! Ya that’s it. Thank!
Awesome!
Thank you for thinking aloud. It helps those of us who are struggling when we hear your process, and how things are going. I’d like to read what you’re writing. You’re an articulate and perceptive person, from what I’ve seen. Makes for nommy reads…..
Good. Keep going as you planned.
Way to go! It helps to get an outside perspective. I always think my writing sucks. It renews my belief in myself as a writer when someone gives me good feedback. After doing technical writing and business writing for so many years, I thought I had nothing left of my creative side, but now I think I might stand a chance. Just keep writing.
I’m so looking forward to reading these! Really glad you’re writing again.
Wil, I’m really enjoying the more regular posts. Keep it up please!
I had a question about your rewrite process: do you have a set number of rewrites that you always do, or do you let it be more organic? As in, do you do as many rewrites as you feel is necessary until you’re happy, or do you limit yourself so it doesn’t go on forever? I’m sure I could have asked that with one question…sorry.