Well hello there, June! Is it summer already? I must have missed the memo.

But if it truly is summer– and I’m still not 100% convinced that it is– that means it’s been 4 months since I started this wild ride of writing my first novel. 4 months of work. 4 months of commitment. 4 months of putting my head down and getting it done.

So, how’s it going, I hear you ask. Well, it’s been tough, but I’m getting there. Things are falling into place. It’s been fun and freeing and creatively fulfilling, and I can’t believe I waited this long to finally do it…

Ha! Psych! I really had you going there, didn’t I? What a joker.

Would you like to know how it’s really going? How the novel is coming along? How many words I’ve written? How much I’m enjoying sitting down every day to write? Well. Let me tell you…

Not. Great.

If I were being kind, I’d say I’ve been working out the kinks in my process. Learning a new skill. Figuring things out. If I wasn’t being kind, I’d say it’s been a complete disaster. But either way, let me be honest with you.

These first few months have been, and continue to be, Not. Great.

---

I originally intended to write this piece once I had a finished first draft in my hands. So I could look back on all the challenges and stumbling blocks from a place of completion. A place of “yeah, it was hard, but I pushed through, and here are some tips on how you can too.”

But I was talking with a fellow writer recently– my long-suffering best friend who’s decided to come with me on this journey of turning an idea into something that resembles a book– and in our jokes and laughter about how much fanfiction we’ve been reading lately, and how hard it is to find the time to just sit down and write, I found, to my surprise, that our experience of trying to write our very first novels have been rather similar. Like pulling teeth. With just as much blood and the instinctual desire to run the fuck away.

But instead of demoralising me, instead of agreeing that neither of us were cut out for this and perhaps we should both go back to the day jobs, I found it overwhelmingly inspiring. Not because misery loves company (or not entirely for that reason), and not because complaining about something is always easier than doing it.

But because sometimes we don’t need advice. We don’t need writing seminars, and books on the craft, and tips and tricks from pros who have been there before.

What we need is to know that we’re not failures for finding this hard. We’re not crazy for second-guessing ourselves every day. And not only have other people been here before, but there are other people here with us right now, feeling and doing and thinking the same shit we are.

So, in the spirit of honesty and camaraderie, and a little selfish desire to get this off my chest, I thought, why not tell it like it is. From the trenches. Not from a place of having completed the task, but from the muddy waters of still trying to do it.

And the truth is… trying to write a novel is legitimately the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.

---

Not. Great.

Finishing my degree? Starting a new career? Trying to make friends as an adult in their 30s who likes Dungeons and Dragons, early 2000s punk, and just moved to a new city? All of these things pale in comparison to my recent experience of sitting down at my computer, staring at a blank screen, and trying to put one word in front of the other.

I’m anxious. Constantly. From the moment I wake up to the moment I crash out. When I’m not writing, I feel guilty for not writing. When I’m reading, every beautiful sentence fills me with envy, and a tinge of dread that I’ll never be that good. And when I am writing, I feel like I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about putting one word in front of another.

I’m second-guessing everything I do: My plot’s not good enough. My characters are dull. My worldbuilding is more holes than world. And the words! Oh, the words. Don’t get me started on the words. I write a paragraph and instantly hate it to the core. But I try to keep going, because bad words are better than no words, right? So then I have a complete mess staring back at me that makes me feel physically uncomfortable to look at.

The things I’ve created before feel lost to me. Like they came from someone else’s hand. Someone else’s head. And I have absolutely no idea how to create them again.

Plot has become something that terrifies me. So I try not to think about it. Try to focus on the small things. The scenes. The characters. A few lines of dialogue… But the action eludes me. The words elude me. Every sentence carries this weight that it never did before; there has to be purpose, theme, backstory, motive, narrative structure, emotional arcs, charcter bulding, rising tension. Oh, and remember, show don’t tell!

And honestly, it’s exhausting.

And incredibly unproductive, to say the least.

---

Just breathe… normally

Right now, for me, writing feels like breathing. In the sense that as soon as someone tells you to breathe, you forget how to do it.

But the one thing that is keeping going– making me sit back down at the desk every time I want to run– has been talking to other writers who say the same thing. “Yeah, this is hard.” “Yeah, this is making me feel like shit.”

So here it is. One writer to another:

Yeah, this is hard. And yeah, this is making me feel like shit. And I’ve never written so little in my life and hated it quite so much.

But you know what, we’re in this together.

And I’ve got a plan to help us make it through…

---