When writing doesn’t come easy (which it never does)

I have been steadily working on my second novel, yet it feels as if I have made no progress at all. I’ve been terrible at keeping track of my word count as it slowly rises, primarily because as I write, everything shifts. I write a chapter set in the present only to discover I need many chapters of the past to be written first, so I go back and begin writing the past only to discover I am summarizing events that need to be more concrete. They need details and texture and context.

I glance to my word count board, marveling at the fact that I have been able to shade any of the squares in at all. How many words have I actually written? How many of them belong inside the actual novel and how many of them are merely fodder for the tale I am attempting to write into existence?

It doesn’t help that I’m not entirely sure how long this second book of mine will be. When I began writing ADILV, I had the idea of crafting 30 chapters. The number simply appeared to me one day. I liked it, the roundness of it. And I was able to work backwards to approximate how many words that would entail. I looked up average novel word count lengths. I assumed I wanted roughly 300 pages of words to tell Emiliana’s story. I did a little math and came out the other side with a clear goal in mind of 90K words.

In the end, I wrote something like 120K words and a total of 32 chapters. Not as elegant or beautifully rounded as the number 30, but those extra two chapters and words were necessary for the story.

Beginning this process a second time, I feel as if 90K words or 30 chapters is way too constricting. There is, quite literally, an entire life I wish to share between the cover pages. A life that spans multiple countries and a layering of nuance and a transformation of the person at the heart of the story, from where she begins to where we begin to where all of us eventually end.

It’s frightening to think of the scope of this project. I fear it is too big of an idea, too large of a story to attempt to convey, but also. . . do I have enough? Will I be able to find the fine line between writing an unlikeable character who you are rooting for, deep down? Can I capture the nuance I hope to imbibe or are there too many ideas happening at once? How can one life be boiled down to a small fragment, an essence distilled and packaged and shared in an easily digestible manner?

These are questions I hold with me every morning I show up to write, but I won’t have the answers until I actually do the writing.

I keep showing up to the page and it keeps feeling hard. Harder than I remember it being the first time. Harder to pull the words from my brain and organize them beautifully and meaningfully on the page.

That is, until I stumble upon a set of old notes buried in a slender notebook. Notes about all the little things I felt I needed to change with ADILV that I have long since forgotten, the memories of writing my first novel worn until smooth and seamless, as if I had always been capable of simply touching my fingers to the keys of my laptop and allowing gold to pour out of them (not that I actually believe my first novel is perfect, but that the feelings of writing were somehow better then than they are now).

The feeling is similar to when I have spoken to my best friend about giving birth to her children, especially her first. She has said, time and again, that after awhile, the memory begins to fade as does the pain, to the point where it all feels like a blur and not as terrible as it likely felt in the moment. Instead, a new story begins to take its place, one of all the highlights of the day, until there is nothing but a shiny glow to the memory.

That is how it currently feels, as I struggle through this second attempt at writing. It feels as if my first attempt was an utter fluke, that it was so easy and magical and glowing and because I cannot seem to capture those exact feelings again, I must be doing something wrong. I must have lost all ability to write and will have to settle for whatever piddle comes out of my brain and lands onto the page.

But the notes I found in that slender little notebook suggest otherwise. They remind me of the two months I stopped writing ADILV after having read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. My insecurity had grown so large, knowing I would never write something that magical, that beautiful, I simply couldn’t bring myself to the page. Even though I had sought out the book specifically because an alpha reader had mentioned my writing was reminiscent of that exact story.

That little notebook reminded me of all the days I spent crying over the keyboard, frustrated at not being able to get the words exactly right, instead leaving big chunks of page highlighted and in [little brackets]. It reminds me that I didn’t spend every. single. day writing. That there were loads of breaks in between. That there were months of re-writes and tweaking things one way only to bring them back, playing tug-of-war with myself and my editor.

Writing is hardly ever easy. You have the story, living inside of you for months or years at a time. It wants to breathe, but when you try to give it oxygen, it shies away, unsure how to go about using it. So you must coax it out, little by little. Some days it laps up your offer eagerly, words pouring out in a never ending wave of inspiration. And other days it looks at your offer as if you are crazy, why would it ever wish to breathe on the page?

Thanks but no thanks, come back never.

This month, I dont feel as if I have caught my stride. I’m trying, but more days feel like the story is rejecting the oxygen I am offering it. Still, I have managed to write over the course of 10 days for a total of ~6K words. A little is better than nothing at all. And as I continue to show up, to dress up for inspiration as Elizabeth Gilbert once suggested in Big Magic, it does get easier. More ideas flow towards me.

I am ready, butterfly net in hand, to capture them for a later date in which writing is easier and the oxygen is being taken freely.