December 18, 2023
episode description
I’m finally taking that first step toward my dream of becoming a published author, but lately it seems like I doubt myself at every step of the way. Join me as I begin a journey with a destination that seems more out of my reach than ever.
transcript
I'm finally doing it, taking that first step to becoming a published author, which is very exciting and very scary at the same time. I am kind of like trembling in both excitement and fear simultaneously, and honestly, I'm kind of intimidated. Just by the idea of starting this process as a whole, because writing a book is hard.
It takes persistence and takes, you know, working through the hard parts of when you get stuck. And I'm kind of preemptively dreading all of those hardships before the fun part of writing stories, which I love to do, has even started. And I have been kind of trying to focus on that creative aspect of it that I really enjoy.
But I can't stop associating it with my potential future career and feeling like everything that I write is super important. Every sentence, every word. And it's kind of holding me back. I did also say that I wanted to start writing a novel when the semester started back in August. Obviously that did not happen for many reasons.
One being that I got busy for cuz of coursework and another being that I chose to, for my first ever novel story idea, explore an idea that would require a lot of world building, which, is probably not the best idea because I, even when I wrote short stories for my creative writing classes, I didn't write a lot of stories that required a lot of world building.
So I struggled because of that and because I didn't know what I was doing. I felt like, do I even know how to write? Honestly? Am I even a good writer? Like I don't know what I'm doing and I don't feel passionate about what I'm writing right now or what I'm doing. I feel like I'm just trying to get words on the page and I'm kind of into it, but I'm kind of not, I don't know.
This is hard. It's so hard. Like that's, that's how I was feeling. Um, like, like I was just feeling like stuck because I was just so hyper aware of how difficult this process was. And I also— aside from being limited by my own, like perfectionism, that made me restart my novel draft over and over and over again because I felt like I needed to reread what I had already written to get to, like, to put myself back in the mindset of that world. When I reread it each time I felt like this urge to revise it.
And at first I was like, no just leave it as is. You'll revise it at the end. But I kept, like, every time I did it, I was like, I gotta revise it.
I gotta change stuff. And so I did, I revised it and re-envisioned my story and reshaped it. And I was like, actually, we're not doing that anymore. Now we're gonna have it like this. And so I keep rewriting and rewriting these first like three chapters over and over and over again, not even giving the story a chance to take its form.
Which I think is mainly because in my creative writing classes. It didn't allow enough time for us to work in long form. I mean you could submit chapters to workshop, but I found that those workshops when people submitted chapters was not as effective because you didn't have a lot of the background information you needed because you were just giving like a snippet into maybe the middle of the story or something.
So I didn't really, I didn't really practice writing long form, but I think my endurance suffered. And just the fact that I'm not used to writing such long plots. I felt like I didn't know what to include or if there was too many plot holes, like I didn't know how much to explain, how much I could leave up to the reader to connect the dots.
And I was like, what am I even trying to say in this story? I mean, I know that not every story needs to have a message. But what emotions am I trying to communicate with this narrative? These are questions that I was thinking about as I was writing, and I found that I didn't have the answers. Like I know that you're not gonna have the answer to every question when your writing your first draft.
It's just not gonna happen. But these simple questions were like stumping me from the get-go and I was like, maybe I'm just like not, this is not the story idea to follow for now. Especially because I didn't feel like I was in love with the main character of my story. I find that my writing's really strong is when I'm like in love with the main character.
Like when I wish they were real, and I kind of wasn't feeling that. The character felt kind of bland and like I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what the character wanted. I didn't know what the stakes of the plot was. Like, I was just like trying to create something and it just wasn't making me feel excited about writing in the way that my stories usually do.
And I think I was also held back by the idea of making a book sellable. Knowing that I wanna become a published author and knowing that I have to try to sell my work in every stage of this development. So I have to sell it to myself to make my own self invested in it, then I have to sell it to a literary agent too.
To convince them why they should be invested in making this book reach bookshelves. And then they have sell to an editor. So it's like, in my head I'm thinking like, what tropes am I including in the story and what metadata information would I use to categorize the story? Like, and it's just kinda messed up the authenticity of my story as a whole.
Thinking about how I would write a query letter for my story, it just like this capitalistic mindset kind of it felt like. Also limiting to me as well. And then also knowing about comp titles. So comp titles, if you don't know, are books that are similar to the concept of the plot of your book. Similar books that maybe have sold well in the past.
So an example of a comp title could be: this book that you're writing is The Hunger Games mashed up with the Selection series, like something like that. And when I try to think of like comp titles for the concept, the story concepts that I was writing, it often made me question the individuality and uniqueness of my story.
Cause I was like, maybe every story really has been written and this story is nothing special.
But I tried to keep in mind the advice that I heard in one of my creative writing classes from my professor who said that you should always write a story that only you could write. Meaning that if someone else tried to write the same story that you wrote, it wouldn't be as powerful as impactful, as gut-wrenching as it would've been if you had wrote it.
So, you know, taking your own lived experiences into account and crafting stories around not just what you already know, but what, what is like the essence of who you are as a person, because when you start thinking of stories that are based in that idea, that's when you truly begin writing stories that only you could write.
So, yeah, I'm trying this again, hopefully goes better this time. I am going to use the NaNoWriMo site, so the National Novel Writing Month website to track my progress, even though that's usually in November when that happens. But you know, I was definitely in school, so we're gonna try doing it over winter break instead of national writing month, there is 30 days of writing with roughly 1,600 words written each day.
Um, and at the end of the 30 days, you're supposed to have like a novel length story, or at least the beginning of a novel length story. If you know you've gotten to the end of those 30 days and you feel like the plot hasn't wrapped up, like it's a really good start. Um, so if you want to add me as a buddy, I have the username, Sid, but it's spelled s i d k n e e.
Like your knees, your knees on your legs. Um, so that's my username. Add me as a buddy so you can hold me accountable because I haven't even started and I'm already feeling kind of intimidated and overwhelmed again. And maybe that's because it was so difficult for me the first time that I'm feeling kind of like traumatized, like this time is also gonna be hard, but I know that I have to work through that to get to where I want to be.
But it's just, it's just hard man. It's really stressed me out and I haven't even started. Will I be successful at finishing a novel length story this time? I don't know. Only time will tell. I'll check back in a month and let you know where I am. Um, I'm thinking about doing a podcast episode that kind of summarizes my whole experience with the process, but we'll see.
We'll see if I can, if I'm able to accomplish it. Especially, you know, balancing my part-time job and a bunch of other things that I wanna spend my time on over winter break. It's kind of difficult, but I have faith in myself cause this is something that I really want. Wish me luck with this first draft.
Well, is it, it's not really my first draft, cause I did try a little bit at the beginning of the semester. It's like my first and a half. I wouldn't call it my second. Is it my second? Am I just, and I'm just in like denial maybe. But we're gonna call it my first. This is my first real attempt, my first official attempt at writing a novel.
I'm even doing the NaNoWriMo format. So wish me luck with this process. I'll definitely be sure to update you.
Make sure to follow the podcast on Instagram @jumblepodcast, and also on TikTok @jumblepod. I've started posting on there as well. Feel free to DM me on Instagram with any tips you have about the novel writing process because your girl is really struggling, to be honest.
Like it's, it's hard. Um, but we'll get there. One word, one letter at a time.
I was really tired, welcoming this or recording this podcast. I'm working on my finals right now and I just feel so drained, but I hope that, as always, tomorrow is a better day than today.
I got confused for a second. Wow. I need to take, I need to go to sleep.
I hope that tomorrow is a better day than today for you guys. I hope that I get more work done tomorrow than I did today. But anyway I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
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