I spent almost 5 complete days working on two chapters last week and right at the end of day 4 I figured out what I was doing wrong. Which was a good thing! Except for the fact that day 5 was then spent reverting/changing almost everything I’d written the past four days…

The woes of being a discovery writer.

Discovery writing is about 70/30 (numbers subject to change). 30% of the time is pure exhilaration, where you’re writing, the story is coming and you’re loving life. Then you hit the 70% where you’re fighting to make everything work together. That often means going back and rewriting full passages/chapters, retooling major plot-lines, etc which can be absolutely mind numbing.

A while back, I found this fantastic episode of Writing Excuses that everybody who is in the middle of revising their manuscript should listen to: http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/06/01/writing-excuses-episode-17-this-sucks-and-im-a-horrible-writer/

I came across it at the perfect time, when I was having those exact same thoughts. And it was very encouraging to hear that even these incredibly successful and talented authors have the same thoughts. And I don’t mean prior to being published, I mean while actively working today. Writing is a slog at times, and especially when you are just trying to get started the doubt can be crippling. When it’s at its worst, you have to keep going though, because the key to being successful is putting in the hours. Speaking of which, I need to go log a couple now.