There are pieces of the writing life that get easier the longer you’ve been on your journey. Writing a synopsis, for example, used to be a multiple-day process with lots of grumbling. Now I’ve learned what makes it enjoyable for me (doing it before the book is written) and it goes much, much quicker.
Other pieces, like self-doubt and a snotty inner editor, are possibly getting worse the longer I write. On a writing retreat, I talked about this with my friend Roseanna White, who releases three books a year on top of owning WhiteFire Publishing. She was laughing about how would sit next to her teenage daughter while they were both writing stories. Her daughter hardly ever stopped typing, while Roseanna kept getting distracted or stuck.
Before I was published, if you’d asked me, “Do you think your self-doubt and judgmental inner editor will get better or worse after publication?” I would have definitely told you they would get better. After being published, I would then have the validation of being a Real Writer with a published book and all. Wouldn’t that crush my self-doubt and silence my know-it-all inner editor?
Maybe some authors do experience a decline in doubts after they’re published, but most I know confess the opposite. And it makes sense. If I’m nervous about something I’m doing, adding an audience and increasing expectations never makes me less nervous, right? When I was learning how to drive a stick shift, it would not have helped if we’d filled the car up with all my friends and I realized that people’s jobs depended on how well I drove. So why did I think being published was going to improve my problems?
While doubts and voices have grown louder, what I have gotten better at it is managing those inner voices. As a new writer, my fears would sometimes literally cause me to curl up in the fetal position, whereas now I have enough experience to ward off episodes like that. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Don’t let the voices do all the talking.
Those little voices looooove whispering right in my ear. This book idea isn’t nearly as good as your last one. Last time your agent was way more excited.
I used to try to just ignore them. Now I’ve learned to interact. When they start getting real loud, I’ll think, “Quiet please, I’m trying to work. You and I can talk later.”
I’ve also found value in indulging that critical part of myself and exploring those “what ifs?” my brain loves to throw at me when I’m trying to create:
Inner editor: What if your editor hates how you’ve handled this character?
Me: That’s a great question. What do you think will happen?
Inner editor: She’ll probably laugh at you behind your back and tell all her editor friends.
Me: Really? She’s very professional. That doesn’t seem likely. It seems more likely that she’ll just ask me about going a different direction.
Inner editor: That could mean a lot of rewrites and work for you.
Me: That’s true. Good thing I know how to do that, huh? Okay, please be quiet now. I’m writing. We can edit together later.
When the voices get loud, there’s no one but you who can tell them to be quiet.
Don’t forget you’re in charge.
I don’t know about your inner editor, but mine demands perfection from word one. And I used to try to appease the inner editor, thinking it knew better than me. If I didn’t know exactly where the scene was going, I didn’t write it. If I noticed a flaw in chapter one, I would halt the whole book to go back and fix it.
Now I’ve realized that the inner editor works for me, not the other way around, and that the inner editor has to be reminded regularly that writing a novel (or any kind of creating, really) is a process.
Those conversations go like this:
Inner editor: This chapter is terrible. Look at all those dialogue tags you’re using.
Me: This is just the first draft. It’s easier for me to fix that stuff when I edit than to lose the flow of the conversation I’m currently writing.
Inner editor: This book really isn’t as good as your last one.
Me: Of course it isn’t. That one has gone through multiple rounds of edits and copy editing. It started out as ugly duckling too, remember?
If your inner editor is anything like mine, it’ll try to convince you that you better get this story right the first time, or you’ve blown it. Don’t fall for it!
When you tell a friend, you take away the power.
The fastest way to shut down those voices is to tell a fellow writer. If you don’t have any writer friends to tell your fears to, email ME. (Stephanie(at)GoTeenWriters.com) I can pretty much guarantee that whatever is bothering you has bothered me at least once before.
Any time I’ve spoken my fears out loud to a trusted writer friend, they’ve been quick to either point out faulty logic or tell me they go through the same thing.
A quick, simple example is on the writing retreat when I commented to Roseanna, “I’m using so many dialogue tags. And I just paired one with an adverb.”
“My first drafts are always full of tags and adverbs,” she said.
Boom. I felt myself write freer after that. Before that simple exchange, I felt so heavy. Oh, gosh, I’m using yet another tag. I know I’m going to have to change that out in edits. After the conversation, I felt like, No big deal. This happens all the time in first drafts!
Your writerly doubts and super critical inner editor are most likely going to be your companions for the duration of your writing journey, so learning how to maintain them is vital.
Have you found anything that works well for you? Even if you haven’t, feel welcome to post in the comments something that your inner editor loves to taunt you about. I bet you’re not alone!
I’ll go first, my inner editor loves to get onto me about how I should be writing faster. Real writers write fast, it says. (False!) What about you?
Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
I struggle with this all the time. I’ve gotten better with a bad first draft, but all that angst/fear of not knowing what to do is pushed to revisions and the second draft. I have to remind myself I don’t have to get everything right in the second, third, fourth draft etc..
What’s helped me the most is keeping a list of my most frequent fears and questions along with answers to them and quotes about progress.
That’s great, Tonya. It’s not an issue that magically goes away with time, so taking an active approach like that is smart!
Oh I struggled with this SO much! I’ll be writing fluently I’m like ‘this is great! It’s going so well!’ Then a few days later my inner editor starts talking, telling me this piece sucks. When it’s the first draft!
I also get very competitive lol. I’ll read another persons writing or a book and think, ‘wow, I’m not that talented.’ Or, ‘This work is so much better.’ And so on.
It’s so good to hear other people struggle with this too ? and this post really helps me know I’m not the only one struggling. Thank you for posting!
I relate to this so much! I’ll get in a flow with my first draft and feel like the scene is really coming alive. Then I’ll reread the next day and see how thin everything really is. The good thing is that the more you go through the process of writing, rewriting, and editing, it becomes easier to remind yourself that it’s normal for a first draft to feel incomplete and that you’ll fix it in edits, just like you did last time. But it’s still a frustrating feeling!
We have a saying in writing to not compare your first draft to somebody else’s finished product, and I tell myself that all the time! That book you love you so much started out as a bad first draft just like they all do!
Thank you SO MUCH for this post!! I’m writing again for the first time in nearly two years, and my editor is trying very hard to convince me that I’ve lost my knack. (Among approximately 5000 other things, lol.)
That sounds like the same thing my inner editor says when I’ve gone through long seasons of rejections or have been away from writing for a while! But in those two years, you’ve grown in wisdom and depth. Maybe you haven’t been actively writing stories, but you’ve been reading and watching movies and engaging with stories. You’re returning to story writing as an evolved person, and that will make you an even better writer!
Whenever I realize a flaw in an earlier chapter, I like to jot a note of it down so I can go back later (otherwise I know I’ll forget what I wanted to fix)… but I still fall into the “halting my whole book for one mistake” trap!
Kassidy, I used to really fixate on mistakes and think I needed to rewrite the early parts of my book until it was perfect. When I started resisting that urge and finishing manuscripts is when I really started to grow as a writer. Leaving yourself notes to come back to it is a great way to allow your inner editor to acknowledge the issue and assure it that you will come back and fix it!
I’ve found several random things, but the biggest one is, “I deal with this problem in the next draft.” And I’m on the second draft of a novel now and dealing with those problems, and it’s a lot easier!(Partly cuz I found a process/routine/whatever that works for me). Right now, I’m mostly just dealing with a bunch of subplot ideas that I want to weave in in the third draft but getting frustrated at not doing so right now, lol.
Thanks for this post, it’s really helpful and encouraging!
Ellie, YES! The magic of stories truly happens in our edits when we make sure everything fits together like it should. But it’s hard to trust that if you’ve never finished a first draft and gone through the editing process. I’m so happy that you’ve found something that works for you!
I often go through previously written chapters with the mindset of “What did I mess up in this one?” instead of “how can I make this better?” Also, since I’m a newbie writer, and due to past unhelpful criticism, I hesitate to share my draft for feedback. The Write Faster bug hits me pretty hard as well. it is hard to believe I’ll ever finish a first draft and feel the “magic of stories” in edits.
Any tips?
One of the biggest challenges for new writers, in my opinion, is that you are learning so much and improving so quickly that by the time you finish a first draft, you’ve evolved so much that you easily see mistakes and how hard it would be to fix them without just completely rewriting the thing. That used to happen to me all the time, only I didn’t have language for it.
Sometimes for me the answer was to abandon the book. The problems were baked into the story idea itself, and I’d lost my enthusiasm for the book, so I would put it away and work on new ideas. But sometimes, months later, I would think of a way to fix that old idea, or I would feel excited about it again, and I would bring it back out and work on rewriting/editing it. That happened often enough that I started telling myself, “I’m putting this book away for now, but maybe not forever.”
So much of our improvement as a writer lies in our ability to detect patterns in ourselves. “Oh, I’m experiencing that thing I often do when I’m about 2/3 of the way through a first draft, and I’m feeling discouraged. But I always find my way through.” But to notice the patterns, you have to give yourself more data to work with. Meaning, you have to keep writing books!
Is that helpful at all?
Yes, that is super helpful! Thanks so much!