The Dreaded Start – The Climb #618

Sunday 1^st November 2020

And so we begin.

I wish I could say I’m excited about this novel but despite all the work, I feel unprepared. The beginning doesn’t feel exciting enough; I feel it needs to start with a punch to keep with the feel I want for the novel.

But it is what it is.

I did a quick presentation of my planning to my local NaNoWriMo group today and they all said my notes looked neat. First time I’ve ever been called neat.

But it did make me realise that I’ve leveled up as a writer. Look, the obscurity is killing me right now. It’s not that I want the praise, but I want the acknowledgement. With a load of things I want to do, I really don’t feel I’ve earned the authority to do so, and I find that frustrating. At the same time, I realise it has to be earned. So I sit away in almost silence, waiting for when I can showcase what I’ve done for people to love or hate as they see fit.

But with that, I sometimes forget my own skills. Yes, I’ve put a huge amount of work into craft this year. Is it any wonder that my planning looks professional and advanced? Probably not.

And so, I am probably putting myself under a lot of subconcious pressure for this novel to be “amazing” out the gate. Who can blame me for wanting to write something that needs an edit rather than a full rewrite?

But despite not having written anything completely new in a long time, and feeling the way I am, I still managed to crank out a first chapter. They say that professional writers are able to turn out novels when they don’t feel inspired, and the work I’ve done over the last week definitely seemed to aid that.

And I didn’t hate it. It’s actually pretty good considering. But I’m in a new world, new voice, new characters, and all that uncertainty is feeding into me. I’m pretty sure I felt the same way when I started Black As Knight.

The trick now is to keep it going. This is a good idea, and I’m still not sure what type of book I want this to be. Not in terms of genre or theme, but in terms of how I relate to it.

Writing is always difficult and every book is different. This is an experimental novel for me, but a lot of the experimentation has now been done. What’s left is the graft that comes afterwards. That’s always daunting.

Lots of work still to go, but as a start, it’s gone really well. Let’s keep going and see where it takes me.