Expectations vs. Reality
Hello Friend,
You know those expectation vs. reality memes that highlight a gaping chasm between the beautiful masterpiece someone sets out to create and the pile of smoldering rubble they end up with? That’s where we are in our writing process, and boy is it humbling.
We have spent years developing our world, our characters, our plot. The story we have created is massive and we want nothing more than to bring it to life so others can experience it with us. To do that, we must only words to give shape to something that exists only in our minds. And if we want to do it well, we have to do it in a way that readers will enjoy. Needless to say, this is quite the challenge.
We are well into writing the first book in our series and the words are flowing, but they’re the words of a first draft. All of the major plot points are being hit, but much of it is still little more than stream-of-consciousness writing. On a scale between stick figures and Picasso, our opinion of our initial chapters falls somewhere closer to the former.
It all occurs in a strange cycle of emotions. At first, while staring at the blank page and wondering how to simply begin a new scene, there’s this feeling of hopeless frustration and fear that the right words will never come. Eventually, however, they do come. Then comes the euphoric phase, where the scene fully comes together and the words feel like they’re being channeled onto the page as if summoned from another dimension, and we’re merely the lucky vessels that’ve been chosen to deliver this divine message. This feeling lasts only as long as it takes to go back and reread that scene after stepping away from it for a couple days. This is the point when all the holes, inconsistencies, overuse of certain words, poor structure, bad dialogue, weird and unnecessary info dumps, etc. make themselves known, and with it comes a feeling of dread. But then we take notes, make comments, and discuss how we can make it better on the next draft, and we’re left with a feeling of hope before the cycle repeats.
Now that we’re well into our first draft, that feeling of hope only continues to grow. Not only are we getting better at identifying what works and what doesn’t work, we find that each chapter we complete is better than the last. The characters are coming to life and it’s becoming easier to dive into their unique perspectives with each new scene. Our tones are solidifying, and the world is revealing itself to us more every day. It would have been easy for us to give up after the first few failed attempts and to move on to something less challenging. But after sticking with it and continuously pushing through the resistance, it’s becoming clear to us that with enough persistence, we will be left with something that we can both be proud of.
We’ve got a long road ahead before we will be happy with the quality of our craft, but luckily for us, neither one of us is afraid of a challenge.
We would love to hear – Have you ever taken on a project that didn’t turn out quite like you imagined? What did you do to improve?
Always with gratitude,
Tim and Court
