Knowing You're Not Alone, Editing Sucks, and Life Happens

Okay folks, I am going to be unabashedly honest with you all, right here, right now. At this point of my journey with writing I have reached treacherous waters and rocky roads--and by that I simply mean that I am having the roughest time writing that I have had in... well, forever.

I've been beating myself up about this for weeks, but for now I have decided I'm going to place an indefinite hold on the mental flagellation. Why, you may ask? Because I have realized three very important things that vindicate this difficult time I'm having with writing, and tonight I am going to share them with you.

1) You are not alone.

And neither am I! Every single writer that seriously commits to writing a novel goes through these exact same trials. Hanging around people that are endeavoring to complete the same task you are, whether it's finishing a novel or running a marathon, is extremely comforting and enlightening. Since I don't have any friends--yet--that have reached this point in their writing, I hang out around the right people right here on the internet. There are several links I've happened upon recently that have helped me realize that I'm not alone--and here they are:

Nathan Bransford--How do you deal with the "Am-I-Crazies"?

In this post, literary agent Nathan Bransford basically says that every writer deals with what he calls the "Am-I-Crazies" at some point or another in their writing career. If you're wondering what the Am-I-Crazies entail, it's exactly what it sounds like: you tearing your hair out and repeatedly asking yourself if you are insane for ever even thinking you could write a novel. The comments section in the blog is overflowing with tons of ways to seek relief from the Am-I-Crazies, and also serves as solid, concrete proof that you are not alone if you are experiencing them.

The second thing I found that brightened my spirits and made me realize I wasn't alone was this interview with authors Cassandra Clare and Lisa McMann. One of the first questions asked is, "What is the hardest part about writing?" Lisa McMann responds that, "The hardest part some days is actually starting to write and open up that word document and actually getting the document open and ready to go." Tell me about it--that's how I've been feeling on a daily basis for weeks! It was incredibly soothing to know that other writers undergo the same difficulties that I'm having right now.

2) Writing is hard... Editing is harder.

So I'm at least 99.9% certain that the reason I feel like I'm going to explode is that I'm editing, not writing. Sure, the two are very closely connected, because a majority of the time you write fresh material when you edit, but they are also galaxies apart. Author Natalie Whipple helped me understand this with her amazing post entitled "Do It Anyway".

She talks about writing (and editing) and how ridiculously hard it is, but also about how fantastically wonderful it can be. This ties into my "You are not alone" theory in many ways. For one, half the feelings she described in that post have been a consistent factor in my life for some time now--but on the other end of the spectrum she reminded me that those glorious feelings of perfecting a description or nailing a line are absolutely insurmountable. It's those moments that make it all worth it.

Editing is a crazy, unpredictable ride. As Natalie said in another post, "Even my biggest first drafting struggles pale in comparison to my challenges in editing." I second that completely for an infinite amount of reasons. The words are already there, but it's hard to decide what to do with them if they're mediocre. Do you try to spice the sentence up, or do you delete it altogether? In addition to that, patching up plot holes or adding new material is also a tricky task. But the hardest of all is making the writing match. For me, the writing in the first half of my novel is radically different from the second half. This is because I hadn't written in years when I began the novel, but by the end of 7 months of writing every day, I had blossomed and grown as a writer, making the writing way better in the second half.

Every one will experience different challenges and tribulations when it comes to editing, but if you're like Natalie and me, my best piece of advice is this: Take it slow. Don't rush the editing process, or let the editing process rush you. If you think you're on a deadline, forget about the deadline. The cost of speeding through editing is much higher than taking it slow.

3) Life Happens

Nathan Bransford was absent this week, so he enlisted several guest bloggers to fill the blogging void while he was away. Though all the entries were awesome, there was one that I found particularly compelling. In it, Bryan Russell talks about how he had a perfect, painstakingly detailed plan for his writing career, and that it basically got derailed by life--but that's okay. The moral of the post is that things will not always go the way you expect them to, but that that's alright.

Personally, I wholly agree with him. I thought I'd have my first draft finished by April 2009, when in reality it became June. I thought I'd be querying literary agents by the time the fall semester started at ASU, but that didn't happen either--by then I hadn't even fully edited the first three chapters! And most recently, I thought I would finish my first draft edit by the time my winter break expired--yet here I am, concluding the first week of school, and I'm still on only chapter nine of eighteen.

So yes, life happens, and often gets in the way of our plan of how we think things are going to go. But the best you can to is realize this and accept it, and keep on keepin' on. You can do it--and so can I.

And Bob Marley's 'Three Little Birds' is playing at my coffee house right at this moment. I think I'll end on that note. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend! :)

The Beginning

For a long while, I was under the impression that writing was a dead passion for me. Though I had been writing since the 3rd grade, I hadn't really written anything substantial in years. The furthest any project of mine had gotten was 47 pages on Microsoft Word, and that was something I had written in 7th grade. By the time I entered my freshmen year of college, I was convinced that, while I used to love writing and could write well, I had lost all interest/talent that I may have once had.

I remained living in that world until November of 2008. At the start of the month, I started thinking about writing again, and I tried to write a few times, but I was largely unsuccessful. But one night near the end of the month, I arbitrarily wrote down a one-page piece of work. It was clear that it was the beginning of a story, but as to what the story was I had no idea. I never intended to do anything with the piece of writing--it was just something for fun, and after all, I had no plot to continue with anyway.

I started thinking about the story from 7th grade, and how far it had gotten. Though I had come up with them when I was 13, I still loved my characters, and I wished I could find someway to utilize them again--but the plot seemed silly to me now, and I couldn't figure out how to rework it. After I had given up, I was at work one day, bored out of my mind, when it hit me. I suddenly saw how I could make the story work, how I could update the characters, and where I could set it. I realized that the one-page piece of work from a few days ago could become my prologue. I wrote the first chapter a couple of days after that.

I started in late November, and finished on June 28th, 2009 at 110,000 words. My genre is Young Adult Fantasy. As of today, I am almost halfway done with my edit of the first draft. I have the skeleton of a query letter than needs some serious work, but I have a decent list of agents that I want to query. Right now I'm continuing to edit the first draft, and when I've finished that I plan on reworking the query letter--after that, and once I feel the manuscript is ready, I will begin querying!

So, sans the life story up there, that's exactly what this blog will be doing: chronicling my writing endeavors as I take my first foray into the extremely intimidating and seemingly cutthroat world of publishing. On the way, I'll post my thoughts on writing as well as things I learn as I grow and mature as a writer. Hopefully there will be advice and ideas that can help you learn and grow as a writer too!

The blog is called Writer By Night because I do a large part of my writing after the sun has vanished into the west, holed up at my favorite coffee shop until four in the morning. I do write during the day, but much less often. As for now, because I'm just starting out and returning to school, I'm afraid that there won't be much of a structure with my posts. They'll tend to be sporadic, but it is my intent to post as often as I can.

Thank you for reading and tagging along on my adventure with me!