I just sent out my second draft of my first novel out to beta readers, and I have things to say.
This moment is the culmination of seventeen months, two drafts, and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work and stress, and I’m terrified that I didn’t do a good enough job. But also… I’m thinking how ready I am to do it all over.
I’ve been in desperate need of a break from reading/editing it, so I’m glad to have an excuse for a few weeks to not touch it and decompress. Yet with as much stress as it has caused in the last few months especially, I still feel the urge to write something. That’s why I’m here now. Writing a simple blog post seems a better speed than trying to jump into thinking of a plot for a another book straight away (I considered it). But really, ever since I started this book writing project, my mind wanders into all the possibilities of what I might create in the future.
My brain has always worked this way. I always think up more creative projects than I can possibly do in a lifetime. I believe I have a post about this already, but this is why prioritization is so important. And for the past seventeen months, learning to write has been my priority.
While I’m far from being done with this journey, I did want to highlight some of the best things I’ve learned along the way.
The older I get the more I see writing as the driver of culture and social norms. It’s the imprint of a human’s mind spelled out for other humans to ingest. You’ve heard the saying “there is nothing new under the sun.” Well, that’s true; but also, anything we ever learn is because someone else learned it before us and passed it down through generations. This is done verbally or by writing.
Any beliefs people hold comes from a written record. Any history we know is preserved in writing. And new or old skills must be documented in writing (or audio) for it to be lasting. Any entertainment we consume has to have some form of writing involved. Even composers with music, although I’m not going to get into that. Music is essentially a language but I’m mostly referring to the writing involving words. Words are the preservation of our minds and that is a very powerful thing.
That’s not to say that writing something down means it is permanent and can’t be lost, sure it can; but for all the knowledge we retain, it most likely had first been written.
It honestly has given me such a vast appreciation for writers and storytellers. I never before considered it something I’d be interested in. In many ways, I see writing as even more valuable than visual art and that’s saying something since I adore visual art and have dedicated most of my life to learning different forms of it. But writing feels more permanent and more touching to the soul. Not that a painting can’t touch the soul or tell a story, but it’s a different kind of imprint.
When I see a painting, I don’t linger on it for more than a few minutes at a time, even if the painting is telling a remarkable story. But the words we read travel with us. Themes stay with us. Phrases can be reused upon remembrance and be communicated to other people who might need to hear them. A painting, while wonderful for what it is, can’t be shared as readily unless it is directly in front of the viewer. Words and ideas are the main tool of communication. Language is how we interact with the world around us. Words can affect our moods deeper than anything else. Written words are the imprints of our thoughts, so in a sense, reading someone’s writing is like reading their mind. And that’s what makes writing so powerful. I don’t know if I’ve described it well enough, but that’s the best I can do right now.
What else have I learned? Writing is also incredibly difficult. It can be a very lonely occupation because it’s very difficult to sit alone with your thoughts for hours on end. At the same time, it can be rewarding for all the reasons I mentioned previously. I have no way of expounding upon this idea at the moment. Writing is hard, and I never understood how hard until I actually started doing it more seriously.
Storytelling is a separate subject I won’t get into here. That has also been a huge learning curve for me, but it goes deeper than just writing. I even struggle to tell stories with my art. Such a discussion might need a separate post. However, storytelling compounded with the art of constructing sentences and communicating ideas, means the novel project has been twice as difficult for me.
I realized that I have been rambling this entire post with no plans for where it was going, and that brings up another remarkable thing about all this! Writing encapsulates the ebb and flow of our thoughts. You know you when you have a good conversation with someone and the topic switches every minute because the exchange of ideas is so good that it just builds on itself? Writing things down makes them feel more tactile and important. I have been, for years, using writing also as a tool to “have a conversation with myself,” also known as journaling or blogging.
In those times when I have no one else to share my thoughts with, I can always share them with a pencil and paper or a keyboard and a screen. Prayer journals are the best thing I could have ever done to ward off depressing thoughts—expelling them to relieve my mind. It’s like our heads get too full of our own good and we have to ease the pressure inside a bit. It’s no different than how a person, who has a lot to say, rants and talks a mile a minute just to “get it all out.” There are literally jobs out, where the practician just has to sit and listen to people vent. The release of thoughts is the release of pressure. Writing is another, quieter form of this, and it is often better than to always heap one’s burdens onto someone else.
In conclusion, writing is probably the most essential skill in life. The more I learn about it from a craft perspective the deeper appreciation I have for it. And the best learning comes by doing.
I had started this post as an excuse to write something. I think I still have residual drive from all the writing for my second draft I’ve been doing that my brain has not quite learned to slow down. This has been a great release of pressure. Thanks for reading.