A couple of months ago, I lost my writing habit. I was preparing for a move, so there was a lot to do and people I wanted to spend time with before the big day. The good news is, I had just finished a major part of the editing process, getting all five books into Story Grids.
The bad news is, I had just finished a major part of the editing process.
Because, as anyone who has ever developed a habit knows, it’s hard to build it back after you lose it, and especially so on a creative project where it’s hard to find a place to jump in.
In my case, I’ve officially reached the point where I’ve got everything cataloged, which means the challenge now is how to actually fix it. And when you’re talking about a five book series, with each book hovering somewhere between 70-80k words, it’s really hard to wrap your brain around the story, let alone to understand what to change to improve it (and that without breaking it, of course).
It’s pretty daunting, but then I found something that’s really helped on, of all places, LinkedIn. For those unaware, LinkedIn is basically a social network for the business world. There’s a lot I could say about it, but to keep this short, I’ll say this: Something I’ve realized by observing this platform is that most people generally have no idea what they’re doing.
Put to a larger scale: How many of us adults still feel like we have no idea how to adult? If we should stay in our jobs or shoot for another. Go to college or get work experience? For anyone who has ever made a large decision like that, the reality is, well, we kind of just don’t know where that kind of thing is going to take us. Maybe it will be awesome, maybe it won’t, but none of us can tell the future. We’re all just making our best guesses.
Okay, okay, but what does that have to do with publishing books? Honestly, everything. So much of this business is just winging it. Try this marketing tactic, try this big edit, see if another cover does better. Ideally, with practice (and a good team), one gets better with this in time, but there’s never really going to be a guarantee.
To which: Try something.
Seriously. This is coming from an INFJ, the personality type famous for our almost preternatural sense for pattern recognition and future predicting. From someone who hates dipping her toes in unless she already knows the water is fine.
Someone who is trying very hard to puzzle through editing five books at once with no idea how one edit might ripple into another.
Times like this are challenging because my goal is to write things that are high quality, but I also want to get them out in a somewhat timely fashion. Yochni is going to be three this year, and while I recognize it took me three years just to edit that one book last time and now I’ve got five rough drafts in the hopper, sometimes it feels really slow, and I don’t want to waste more time on edits that don’t work.
Isn’t it a comfort then, that none of us really know what we’re doing? To know that sometimes the best way to figure it out is to simply try?
Your turn. What’s something you just had to dive into to get started? Any projects that look like that for you today? Let me know!
This is so good to recognize! I struggle with this too – I am also someone who has a “sense for pattern recognition and future predicting.” Spot on! 😆 I just started painting my condo. I was proud of myself for just going to buy paint and jumping in. It’s been a big project, but also rewarding to see my space transform. Now I need to get back to work….ha!
Well, the lovely thing about paint is that you can always do it again if you don’t like it! Good for you, though! It’s especially hard with something that feels so permanent (and expensive)!