When I was a kid I was scared of the dark. Everything that in the soft subdued lamplight seemed benign and harmless suddenly turned into unrecognisable shapes once the light went out. I couldn’t see what was familiar about my bedroom and so I lay there terrified until at some point I would fall asleep anyway.
On nights when I couldn’t sleep the light would have to go back on while I did my last minute monster check under my bed because you can never be too careful with monsters.
Nothing much changes as you get older except your monsters probably don’t live under your bed anymore. All this to say that I am writing my fourth book and all the monsters live in my head.
Writing is hard in my experience. Every sentence arrives with a battle against perfectionism because the first knockings of any book are usually clunky. The problem with writing is amnesia. I forget that beginnings are awkward and fumbling. I remember last time when I was zipping along through a copy-edit correcting commas and somehow imagining that I just wrote it all down like that first time around. I forget the drafting, the many rounds of edits and the enormous amounts of tears I wept telling myself I can’t do this until eventually the book is finished. I don’t tell you this to put you off writing but to let you know that it costs and some days the price is more than I want to go on paying.
Then you send it out into the world and sit and wait for readers to say something. It’s excruciating and while you wait, the monsters return. They all hate it you tell yourself. They aren’t saying anything because this time you’ve really written a terrible book. If I could flip a light switch to get rid of these monsters I surely would. An author I know once described this period as throwing a coin down a well and waiting for the splosh. It’s just you standing there peering down into the darkness with your monsters on your shoulder whispering to you.
I’ve written three books now and this never gets better. Sometimes it feels so very hard that I am not sure I will carry on writing. Then I get an idea and that magical fizzing inside that makes me want to commit it to paper returns and off we go again.
Sometimes I think people imagine that I don’t need the encouragement because obviously I must know the book is fine after all this isn’t my first rodeo. Yet the silence drives me crazy and the only answers I have is either to quit or to write something else. Either way it’s a tortuous process sometimes. I wish it were otherwise. Yet I love having written. I adore shaping the book in the edit and seeing what’s there. I feel proud of my work but oh man those monsters don’t go away.
So on I go struggling to get the first draft of Book 4 down. Telling myself I can make it better and if I can’t it doesn’t matter - not really. It’s only a book. There’s a fine line for writers between becoming tough enough to deal with the business of publishing and remaining open-hearted and sensitive to the world so you can write about it. It’s an impossible balancing act. I can’t not care as to not care would mean not writing at all.
I don’t have monsters under my bed. I have to defeat them one sentence at a time, one chapter at a time and one book at a time until they disappear.
So if you’re struggling to write know that you’re not alone. I’ve never met a good author who finds writing easy. Most of us are laying there in the dark worrying about the monsters under our bed.
Over here in Fictionland my team are about to send out the proofs of Circus of Mirrors to bloggers and media reviewers. Jessie my marketing queen at Penguin MJ has put together a beautiful package and now the waiting at the well begins….
God, I feel this! The monsters whispering as you try to get imperfect words down.
Congratulations, Julie! And how well articulated this piece is. I love the image of waiting for the splash at the bottom of the well, so true! I am deep in monsterland at the moment, wrestling but loving it at the same time. I’m far from the splash! Just sploshing around in my wellies at the moment, looking for threads to wade onwards! I wish you the best of luck. Xx