Member-only story
The Beautiful Mess of Writing a Novel (And Why It’s Totally Worth It)
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams
Writing stories is the most human endeavour you can engage in. It’s like emptying your soul and making room for more life.
I’ve been writing for more than 15 years. When I first began to write it was all about getting a novel out; churning that nagging story outwards onto paper and publishing it.
I got to work. I wrote everyday. I told myself, “I’ve started, so I’ll finish.” — “And, if at any time I hear a little voice telling me that it’s not worth it, then that’s the devil. Ignore it.”
I did ignore all the little voices that butted into my daily thoughts and tried to convince me that it was a waste of time.
And those irritating little voices didn’t ever go away. There is always a reason to believe that writing is not your game. That it’s all over. That AI can do it better…
The novel that I began to write turned into a mess. I didn’t have any idea how to put scenes together, nor how to make sense of the chaos that I was creating.
It turned into 150,000 words of highly determined chaos.
