My Thoughts... Progress, Not Perfection

In the last few years, I've struggled with writing. You'd think that wouldn't be the case for a person who loves to write, but honestly it's true. I do love to write. I mean, I wouldn't continue to do this if I wasn't finding joy in it. But I had a long period of time where it was difficult to sit down and write a story.

What started this? It was a long list of things that led to this becoming an issue. It was when I was writing the last Lilly Avalon full-length novel. I ended up having two major friendships dissolve within the span of a few months. Then I met Kyle and we began spending a decent amount of time together. I moved for the fourth time in three years. Things changed so quickly, and while I was happy with Kyle, I was also dealing with a lot emotionally.

During all this, I did attempt to start new stories whenever I could find some spare time. There was one story I remember starting that year, but since I got so out of practice my writing was not good. At all. It became stilted again, like it was when I first started. That was discouraging, but after sharing a chapter with a fellow writer and getting feedback, I knew that with some extra effort I could fix it.

However, that never happened.

For the next couple years I continued to struggle. I managed to write three short stories, but nothing longer than 5000 words. It felt nice to finally complete something, but I wanted to get back to writing novellas and novels. I made a plan to start a series set in a small town. I came up with a bunch of the stories, characters, places, and figured out how many books would be in the series and started working on the first book, a novella. Easy peasy, right?

Hmm... not so much.

Life changed at the beginning of 2019 when I intended to start writing the series and I had to start working full-time. My free time reserved for writing essentially went away, which was frustrating. But I decided I wasn't about to let this change completely throw me. So I began outlining the story during lunch breaks at work. I even bought a notebook and extra pens to do this. It helped immensely! The story came together more than before, and it felt like my writing skills were slowly improving.

I briefly took a step away from the novella at the beginning of June because I was having trouble figuring out some of the plot. Instead I started a full-length novel idea I had brewing at the time. I ended up reaching 15,000 words in the story and it felt so good! But then the plot for that story wasn't working.

So, I decided to pick up the novella I stopped writing... and finished it in the middle of September! I was so excited because it was the first time I finished something longer than a short story (it ended at 15,000). Then I decided to begin the next story in the planned series, but the plot wasn't working for me on that one either! It kept feeling like I was going one step forward and two steps back.

But I wasn't giving up.

I wanted to write 15,000 words in October, but I wasn't feeling it when it came to writing. Then people started talking about Preptober, aka time to prepare for NaNoWriMo in November, and it got me to thinking. My first published book was written during NaNo in 2011, and I did attempt to do NaNo in 2015 and didn't win (only made it halfway). I have a feeling that I likely wouldn't be able to reach the 50,000 word goal in a month, especially since I've been so far out of practice and barely had been getting 10,000 in a month... but I wanted to try and see how far I could get.

For NaNoWriMo 2019, my plan was to write three novellas. By the end of the month, I wrote 20,689 words, less than half of the monthly goal. I finished one of the three novellas and half of the second one. Despite only making it partway there, I still felt very accomplished. I hadn't written that much in one month in years, and the first day of the month I wrote over 3,000 words! That was my most productive day and most productive month in a long time.

And that's when I knew I turned over a new leaf.

I am capable of taking on anything I put my mind to. Maybe I won't reach high goals, but I can make smaller goals and aim for higher as time goes on. Which goes back to the title of this post: Progress, Not Perfection. I think that I fell into the trap of believing my work wasn't good enough and it held me back a little. With all this effort, however, I've recognized that my first draft is going to be crap and that's okay. The important part of getting those words from my brain to the page.

Good luck in your writing endeavors, friends!