It may be my second, but it hasn’t gotten any easier

February 14, 2025

Every writer’s process is different. Some have sweeping epics spanning multiple books sitting inside their brains waiting to burst forth and land on the page. Others find inspiration in the humans they meet and the funny things they say or do. And still others are struck by what feels like lightning but calls herself inspiration, an entire idea fully formed and ready to go (a bit rarer than the rest, but still, I’ve heard it happens).

For me, all of my stories have so far come to me in the same way: a character pops into my brain, waves a little “Hi, Hello, how are you?” and quickly turns on her heel, beckoning me to follow.

A Daisy in Lily’s Valley literally sprung from a single note, quickly typed into my iPhone that reads:

Long, soft, wavy muted red haired MC with freckles with a shy personality who loves to bake

That’s all I had to go on. I didn’t know who this girl was or why anyone would want to tune in to her story. All I could do was follow her along, pen and paper at the ready, and see what she revealed to me.

The same has happened moving into my second novel and even third. Yep. I hadn’t even finished writing ADILV when a new raven-haired character with anger simmering beneath her skin and magic in her bones had appeared to me, not-so-patiently waiting or her turn at telling her own story. And while I was following her along, collecting more questions about her than I had answers, a third character cropped up with her own story to tell.

One of seven of my mood boards for my current novel I’ve entitled “Project Magic”

And so begins my writing process.

For now, I will focus on my angry, raven-haired goddess as her story is the one I am focused on telling next. And my, what a story it is to try to tell.

I’ve been following her around for the better part of a year and a half, asking questions, getting glimmers of responses and ideas about who she is, why she is so angry at the world (and herself), where her biggest struggles lie, and on and on and on. It took me some time to understand the overarching narrative that she hopes to tell, which themes she hopes to brush upon, and what nuances she hopes can be honored. To be honest, every day that I write about her, I am taken by surprise.

At first, I thought I would start where she currently resided: her own present day. But I quickly learned that this was a mistake. I couldn’t capture her anger or her sadness or her mixed up frustrations at everything and everyone, including herself. I needed to go back. To peel back the layers that she has built around her that she doesn’t even realize are there. To see those gauzy layers of self being added slowly, one by one, throughout the course of her life.

And it really hasn’t been easy. She is making me do the work.

But through every hard day, I keep reminding myself of a quote I recently came across online.

Photo courtesy of https://reklinzing.com/2019/11/13/your-first-draft-vs-sandcastles/

This quote really helps to remind me to take the pressure off of myself on getting the first draft absolutely perfect. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s likely not going to be very good at all. It’ll have a lot of stops and starts and blank pages and {INSERT SOMETHING HERE}s. That’s simply the nature of first drafts.

You don’t know the story until you start to tell it (an idea inspired by a Terry Pratchett quote), so why put all this extra pressure on yourself to get it “right”? There isn’t even a right to get!

So that is where I am currently. In the middle (or, quite honestly, barely the beginning) of the messy first draft. Written at a halting pace on my typewriter, Willow because it keeps me distraction free and lends the same vibes I hope this novel will transmute to the final page somehow, someway. I can’t even tell you truthfully how much of it I have written, at least not in word or page counts, seeing as I’ve gone analog.

What I can say is that it’s fully formed enough to play on a near constant loop in my head, like brief stills captured from a movie. I have just enough to be frustrated in knowing everything that is going to happen and wanting to share it with you, but not knowing how it all actually happens. My office wall is covered with loose ideas and snippets of scenes and interactions between characters and a notes app that gets filled again and again.

It is all there, waiting inside my brain for the perfect set of circumstances before finding the words on the page. Those circumstances are happening. Slowly, ever so slowly. But they are happening. Magic is turning and showing up, little by little.

I can’t wait to share more as it does.