I've got a bit of a confession.
I may have been a bit over-confident about writing the next novel. I started with a bang, and then got stuck in the muddy middle.
When I stepped back, I realized I've historically had success in one of two ways—either someone told me what to do or I told someone else what to do.
What hasn't worked as well?
When I've been both the boss and sole employee at the same time. Um, like now. That particular combination has been my biggest challenge yet.
The tough boss knows what her employee is capable of and cracks down every time she slacks off even for a second. “You wrote the first draft in 6 weeks! That was months ago. Where’s the second draft?”
The lazy employee says “Working on it, Boss!” then turns into a professional level procrastinator. The most pernicious kind. The one who works her keyster off, but cleverly manages to avoid the hardest and most important work.
The dysfunctional internal drama may be worthy of The Office, but spins most of my energy sideways rather than forward. So finally I stepped into a third role—that of a compassionate coach—and asked my employee self the best question I could.
”You keep fighting this procrastination with calendars, spreadsheets, and task lists. But if you listened to it instead, what might it be trying to tell you?”
From the outside that probably sounds like some particularly Californian blend of daft and woo-woo, but I'll tell you what. From the inside, it was revelatory.
It made me realize something fundamental that I hadn't acknowledged to myself. There were problems with the outline. The story had evolved and deepened in my head since the first draft—all in good ways that would make it a way better story in the end. But first it meant there were plot holes that needed to be sorted out. And instead of fixing them, I was trying to pretend they didn't exist.
Why? Because that nasty boss kept setting her hard-ass deadlines that left me no time to step back and fix things the right way. I could only write breathlessly forward, and the further I went, the greater those holes became.
I wasn't a lazy employee, after all. I was a motivated employee who wanted to build something great. I was just missing some fairly rudimentary self-awareness.
And all that deadline mania? It was trying to save me from failure. It knew there was a big difference between a one-hit wonder novelist and a professional author who can repeatedly deliver. But by trying to force myself to already be that pro, I wasn't giving myself the space to learn how to become that pro.
All that to say, it’s been a dizzy few months. But I think my selves are finally in alignment. The employee got to fix her outline and now she's excited to get back to writing again. And the boss is willing to admit she has no idea how long the second draft will take, but it will be done when it’s done, and she’ll learn more along the way.
I feel like I've mise-en-placed my brain. Lets hope so, anyway. :)
Fair winds,
Cheyenne
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