With the new year fast approaching (how has it already been a year since my last post? 😵💫), it’s a good time to slow down. Slow down and take everything in. Everyday has been life, life, life. Then weekend, weekend, weekend, with some reading or writing thrown in, if I’m lucky. I told myself I would write every weekend, even if it was just a few lines, and it worked for quite a while.
I hadn’t written even a few lines the past few months, and I felt guilty about it. I feel more pressure to work on my current novel… because I dropped the last one. The story I thought about for years, the story I put my blood, sweat, and tears into during grad school — I dropped midway. I had another story in mind, and I wanted to write it right then and there. So I started over. New Google Doc, new outline, new characters, new, er, headache. I’m glad I put my focus on this current novel, as I’ve gotten a lot of good content down. Content that I’m proud of and that feels right to me at this time.
Since I abandoned my last project, I have to put my all into this one. Yet, I feel like I’ve hit a dead end. The first draft is barely a draft — pages and pages of notes and random lines, with some chunks of actual prose. It’s messy and I don’t know where to go from here. Which is scary. It’s why I haven’t sat down to work on it for so long. But, at the same time, I know this is still the story I want to write. I just have to start over, with a new, clean draft.
So now, I’ve got the same story, same characters, but in yet another fresh Google Doc. And, hopefully, a fresh mind. I’ve basically given myself more blank pages to face — a writer’s worst nightmare — and I’m surprisingly okay with that. A refresher is good. Change is good. It’s a nice reminder for myself as 2023 comes waltzing in.
Sara Bechtol 