Writing through Fear

IS THIS THING ON?

Just kidding. I know it’s on. I just haven’t plugged it in. 🙂 

I was talking more about my brain. Something happened this August to my brain. The creative cortex (the medical term), wedged between my knowledge of Beatles lyrics and the quadratic equation, went dark.

At first, it was fine. I haven’t taken a month off of writing since… well, ever. And I was on a family trip to Alaska. But then it continued into September, and if I’m being honest, I’ve only just gotten the words back. But there’s one other thing I’ve been feeling:

Terror.

What if it didn’t come back? What if it happens again and I lose it completely? What if I never connect with characters ever again? The ‘what ifs’ piled up like a mound of spaghetti in a bounce house. (Side note: my 10 year old recently said in school that his dream is for a bounce house made of spaghetti and I think there is simply nothing finer that one could wish for.)

Maybe it will happen again. Maybe I’ll lose the words again, or lose my connection to my characters. It probably just means I want to think about something else. Or take a vacation. Or heaven forbid, not write for a little bit.

I know this is supposed to be a newsletter about writing, but for me, the months of August and September were something else entirely. And I guess I just want to offer it to you, gentle reader, as evidence that I’m scared. And if I’m scared, maybe you are too. Or have been. Or will be. So maybe we can all be scared together?

And I think that’s okay.

SO… WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?

I’m back to writing. Huzzah! And I’m preparing for an intense virtual workshop in October with Whale Rock. (If you’re also going to be there, let me know!)

In addition to that project, I’ve been reconnecting with my Tornado book, and slowly drafting pages of a middle grade novel I’m co-authoring with a close friend. I’m not sure which I’m more excited about, but the middle grade novel is pure fun to write and it’s been such a joy to work with a friend and phenomenal writer.

And… that’s it. I mean, other than general life stuff. Which is a lot.

I CAN WRITE FAST—AND YOU CAN TOO!

I can draft 1100 words in 20 minutes. No joke. But I had to learn how to do it—and now I’m re-teaching myself how! So here’s what I’ve been re-learning:

I realized pretty early on that if I shut out distractions, I could write a lot of words. I would just close my eyes and literally type whatever I was seeing without thinking twice. But it was all too easy to stop what I was doing and make revisions as I went. But then I had a revelation that if I didn’t revise anything, then I could just keep writing. Which was really hard to do because I wanted my drafts to be perfect. But the thing is you’re always going to revise, and revise, and revise again… So there is literally no point in revising as I go.

That’s when I started using a timer set for 20 minutes increments. It gave me a sense of what was possible, what was efficient, and what made me feel the most creative. It also helped to limit distractions, because even my kids could wait for a snack until that timer went off.

But still, there are times where I would want to make a change on the screen. So I found some other hacks. I started using a Freewrite, which is a great device that only lets you see four lines at a time. I’m also big fan of focus mode in Scrivener or Word. There are times where I will even put Post-it notes on my screen so that I can only see one line at a time.

But in reality, it’s all about mindset. It’s all about progress, not perfection. I can revise a messy page, but I can’t revise a blank page.

Beyond that, as long as I keep up with exercising those writing muscles, I find that I’m able to consistently get words out. Are they always great? Hell no. But do they push me closer to the story I want to tell? Sometimes, also no. But it always progresses me in a direction that helps me find the story.

BACKLIST BOOK CLUB

I stumbled upon an older book when I was reviewing notes from a class I took in 2024 about strong voice. Adaptation by Melinda Lo was published in 2012 at the height of the dystopian YA craze, and as strange as it sounds, it’s been like a comfort read.

In the aftermath of a strange series of airplane crashes, Reese finds herself driving a rental car across the country. When a litany of uncanny events leads to a serious car crash, she wakes up 27 days later from a medically induced coma, having had a series of procedures the doctors can’t explain and she can’t remember.

That’s when things get weird.

This is the first in the series and it certainly won’t be the last one I read.

That’s it for now! Until next time…