It’s always hard.

At least, I know it is for me. Nothing in my life that I would call a “win” has ever been easy for me…and the older I get, the more I hear that it’s that way for everyone.

I agonized over Starstuff for almost three full years before that book got published, and I’d consider that experience to be ten times easier than it’s been with this second book. But…

But. I will persevere. I will succeed. I will finish.

This past week and a half or so has been a real wake-up call. I didn’t work on this book’s beginning when I decided to split into two halves mid last year. These were the words I kept. It was a mistake.

It’s the beginning of this book that really put the whole story off the rails, and only now do I see that. I don’t have all the answers for fixing it yet, but I can see it now. And man…that really had me feeling like I’d spent a year of working hundreds of hours on this book, only to be right back where I started from this time last year.

That gutted. It genuinely made me think about quitting yesterday. It really did. What’s the point of working so hard to get nowhere?

What is the point of working so hard to get nowhere?

That’s a scary question. One that cuts really deep for me. It strikes at futility and hopelessness.

So, I asked for help yesterday. And it may only be the first of such requests. And, if any of my readers are reading this and wondering if this means I’ll ever get this next book out, take heart: if it comes down to it, I will HIRE someone to finish it if I can’t. It. Will. Be. Done. It’s not going to come to that, because this has become a very personal story for me…but it does make me feel better to know that no matter what happens, this story will be told.

Liz is going to help me. She already has, actually, with some very specific ideas, but also with the general mentality/note that it’s worth considering very different alternative storylines. If what I have isn’t working, no need to rush forward with such singularity.

So, that’s what I’m going to do. My job tomorrow is to come up with 10 tactics that the villain of this story would use on Petrick to get what they want, things they can do in the early part of the story. And then, write the scenes in which those happen. At least sketches of them. And then…show them to panda.

I need to do this exploratory work, safe work, away from the actual manuscript, because I’ve lost my sense of what’s working and what’s not. I need to explore my own creativity with the story, and then offer it up for feedback. What works best?

And, at least tonight, I’m actually excited about doing that. A side effect of a particularly depressive day for me is that I generally have a bit of snap-back effect. I feel better afterwards. That was today.

I remembered today how much I really love writing and being a writer, and how genuinely happy I can be living that life. It will always be hard…but EVERYTHING is hard in life. Me choosing writing doesn’t save me from that, nor does running from it. It’s all hard. So, why not do the hard that I love.

That sentence doesn’t read like it sounded in my head 😂

Yesterday was a really, really hard day for me, guys. I don’t want to run from that. At all. I thought about giving up. It doesn’t really get worse than that unless I actually did. Give up, that is. The thought crossed my mind, as it has many, many times before.

It’s normal.

It happens.

It’s not something to hide or be ashamed of. When something gets so hard, it feels completely overwhelming and hopeless…how can you not think of giving up? But, on the other side of that, in the rebound, I realize that it truly is just a feeling. There are always options.

Always.