10 things finishing my 10th book taught me
(I cannot believe I typed the title of this post!)
Today, Iām going to be sharing 10 things finishing my 10th book taught me, which meansāas of 2:30 this morning, I have finished writing my tenth novel, aka MOTH WORK. Iāve written posts like this for my 7th, 8th, and 9th novels as well!
Enjoy this note no one asked me to write but that I wrote because I was sad:Ā
I introduced this project on this blog back in June, but actually started it in the notes app of my iPhone (iconic) sometime in January of 2019. At this time, my mental health was *lackin* as I was stressed and in my final months of high school. I needed something to cheer me up, and so Moth Work became a place where I could dump myĀ ābad writingā and also have fun. For more context, you can read more about Moth Work in my various writing updates HERE.Ā
I didnāt intend for this project to become a novel, but thought Iād write it as a longerĀ āfor funā story (prospective word count was 5k words). I chipped away at it for a few months, but didnāt really start picking it up as a serious project until around May/June. It was only once summer vacation hit that I, under the advice of my therapist to have aĀ āreach goalā for the summer, decided to say fuck it!! I shall write this as a novel (prospective word count now 50k words). This novel has seen me graduate high school + almost finish my first year of university, and Iām so excited to share all the wonderful things I learned while writing it!
1. It is totally okay to take your āguilty pleasuresā seriously.Ā
I was in a mega dilemma writing this book. Iād wrapped up writing my ninth novel just after starting this project, and felt a need to write something that was moreĀ āseriousā. Though Iām an advocate for writing what you want, when you want, even I struggled not to feel like I was wasting my time writing a project that didnāt have very much literary/craft merit (in my eyes, this changed eventually).Ā
I am here to tell youādo NOT let anyone, including yourself, shame you out of writing what you like. Allow yourself to let loose and writeĀ ābadā things, and remember you donāt have to feel guilty/ashamed for writing stuff that seemsĀ ājuvenileā orĀ ābadā.
2. Processes changeāembrace this.
I took about 4000 different approaches writing this book, and though I really wanted to stick to one (outlining, pantsing), eventually, I let my process be what it wanted to be. For example, I am a pantser and began this novel pantsing. Very quickly, I realized I needed an outline because I could not keep track of events (this book begins very plot-oriented). But, pre-determining events that would happen eventually stopped working as I began feeling constrained, and so I settled for outlining as I went so I could keep track of plot points.Ā
I outlined 10 of the 15 chapters like this before I sort ofā¦ stopped doing this (though I will go back and fill it in just for future reference)! I went back to full-blown pantsing in the last four or so chapters, as what Iād planned would NOT pan outāand I think itās so important to let your process be what it wants to be. Sometimes this book needed some planningāsometimes it really didnāt. This flexibility has really allowed me to be in touch with my projects more, and really listen to them/understand what it is they need.Ā
3. Sometimes plans change. Donāt be afraid to follow your gut.
I did not plan for Moth Work to be a novel. But as the project developed, so did its final form. My gut was telling me what I needed to do (continue writing), and another example of this is when I sporadically made this a dual point of view book! Iāve never written a full-length dual POV manuscript, and havenāt written dual POV since I was 12, but I didnāt let that stop me from doing what I knew in my gut, was what the book needed.Ā
I want to emphasize hereāsometimes the vision you imagine changes. Allow this change to happen if you feel itās right, even if itās scary. I feel Iāve grown a lot as a writer by just allowing this of myself! Itās easy to beat yourself up for not following your plan, and I did this a lot. Understanding that sometimes plans turn into other plans turn into other plans etc, is the most freeing thing you can do for your writing!
4. Write what makes you happy!
This project began as a means to increase my serotonin lmaooo and I think sometimes as writers, we forget that yes, art is hard, but writing what you like can make that difficulty just a little more tolerable. This book started toiling toward disaster mode for a few chapters in the middle, and I really was not happy writing it. You can feel the difference in the chapters when I felt comfortable writing, versus when I struggled because I felt I āhad toā. And so I took a step back and re-evaluated. Since this was not working/not making me happy, what would? This question solved my problems (not easily, but lead me on the right path). The artist! does not! have to! suffer!Ā
Sometimes problems occur, and critically thinking through them is vital. Iām not saying just to do whatever every time something doesnāt work because this isnāt a shortcut. However, my point is not to be afraid to change things up and write what will make you happier and help you finish the book if you feel thatās what you need. I wanted to write a cheesy romance about two boys who both need to chill, and so though I couldāve written something else, I wrote this because it genuinely made me happier! And I love that about this book!
5. Things can take longer than you expect. Youāre not a bad writer because of this.
YāALL. I wanted to write 50k words of this book over one summer. One month! One! Month! Lots of folks can do this, but I did not! In fact, I hit 50k this month, which is half a year after I projected.Ā
I think a lot of us constitute speed to being a good writer, and while speed and being a good writer can coexist, speed is not necessarily a determining factor in whether you can write or not! This book took me just over a year from when I started it (nine months from when I took it on as a full-time project), and while sure, I couldāve written it faster, I let it develop as it needed, and wrote it when I felt I could. I am not a professional writer with deadlines (thatās different)! While you gotta put in the time to improve, I think you also gotta look out for yourself! Use your gut, and take your time if thatās what you need!
6. Craft and play can coexist.
This took me so long to grasp, and I still struggle with this today! Craft and play can coexist. Say it with me yāall: craft and play can coexist!!
My manifesto for Moth Work initially was to have it be my dumping ground for shitty writing. While this took the pressure off initially, I then felt like I was regressing in my craft (which was untrue, I just didnāt realize it at the time). So, I decided to begin taking the craft aspect of this book very seriously, trying to write polished, delicious prose (every! time!) and the fact of the matter is that often, this did not happen.Ā
I beat myself up over this! I was like: Rachel, 16-year-old you was pumping out better prose than this, whatās up? And I put so much pressure on myself to perfect the writing, even though this was only ever meant to be aĀ āfor funsiesā project. Eventually, I came to understand that, okay, I really do want this to be a for funsies project, but I also want to enjoy re-reading it and not criticizing every aspect of it. I then began incorporating a few passes of line edits after drafting a chapter, until eventually, I stopped circling back to chapters to line-edit them altogether. You donāt have to be perfect on the first draft!
You also donāt have to sacrifice craft to have fun, just as the opposite is true. This book taught me a lot about finding this balance, something Iāve lacked in my writing process for years!
7. Your writing styles can differ from book-to book!
I couldnāt understand why my prose in this book feltĀ āthinā (aka awful in my eyes), why the only thing I felt capable of describing was literally everything shining in some sort of way (glinting, glimmering, glowing lool) or overzealous descriptions of the moon. It was only about a month ago that I realized, after making a breakthrough with my litfic novel Houses With Teeth, that Moth Work was not sucking the life out of my proseāit was just a different book with a different style of writing.
And this makes sense! I was writing with two different characters, in two different perspectives, in a completely different POV than Iām used to writing in the long-form (third-present). Of course things were going to be different! I felt a bit silly realizing this, lol, because it felt so obvious, but I struggled with this for a long time (you can even see bits of this struggle in my video Problems Iām having with writing + solutions).Ā
I thought I had regressed to being a bad writer because of this book, when in reality, the fault was on my inability to stop comparing a very different book to my very different past works. Sometimes you donāt even realize youāre working against yourself! Acknowledging this, and then letting it go was the best thing I did for this book and it allowed me to draft it much faster toward the end!
8. Writing is NOT linear.
I spoke about this in my Problems video, and I honestly was nervous to see how this hot take would be received. However, I was surprised to see that some folks thought this hot take was actually not a bad one, so Iām re-iterating it here!
I think, because we writers are often always practicing writing, we assume everything we write will be better than the last. Honestly, I feel like at least for me, this was my goalāto always be working linearly in terms of progress. It wasnāt until this book that I really came to realize that this is just not how writing works. The easiest way for me to compare this, also as a visual artist, is to say that sure, practice does make perfect, but I have sketches from last week that are worse than sketches I drew two years ago. Why is it that we expect writing to always be linearly better from one project to the next? My answer is that this is just not how writing works. I wrote some of my favourite paragraphs years ago, and may be embarrassed of a paragraph I write tomorrow.Ā
I got caught up in this idealism ofĀ āI must be writing better each time I writeā because I thought this was the most logical progression of my writing craft, but realizing that actually!! progress jumps around, was so important for me. Some days Iām better at writing description, some days I write dialogue worse than I did when I was fourteen! Itās okay not to always be uphill.Ā
Yāall, if I step down a wrung on a ladder and then step up four the very next day, thatās how itās going to be! Practice intrinsically will make you grow as a writer, but it doesnāt mean everything you write has to be better than what you wrote before (though this can be the case, which is awesome). I feel like I donāt see this spoken about enough, so I do want to know if this is relevant to any of you or if this point is bologna!!!
9. The story wants what it wants.
This is heavily in line with some previous points, but is something that was driven home for me while writing this novel. If I can give one piece of advice, it would be to let the story be what it wants to be. If my story wants to be a YA fantasy trilogy, but Iām trying to force it to be a standalone pretentious character-driven coming-of-age saga (calling myself out), my writing may suffer! Of course, some writers can take control over their story and execute their initial vision perfectly! I am not! one of those! people!
Iām a firm believer that sometimes the story wants what it wants, and itās often your best bet to follow this path. Write intuitivelyāif you know something feels wrong, or contrarily, feels right, follow that path.Ā
I did not know how to end this book. Iād had an ending planned for a few months, though it eventually fell apart in the last few weeks. I didnāt know what I would do instead, but last night when I was drafting the last two chapters of the book, I felt in my gut that I was heading to the end. I wanted to stop writing for the nightāI almost did, but instead, I kept at it because I knew I was on a roll toward the finish line, and I felt compelled to follow my instinct. This is how I landed at the end I wrote in, and it was a completely organic process.
Planning out your story is a great thing to do, and Iām not here to start a debate about whether plotting/pantsing is better because theyāre both amazing!! But for me, itās important to let the story breathe, and let it eventually grow into the shoes it chooses for itself. Taking a step back so I could stop trying to mould this story into a place it didnāt want to be is probably the best thing I couldāve done for it because I finished the book. Any process is a good process if it gets you to the end healthily, and for me, allowing the story to be what it wanted to be and allowing it to take the lead helped me get there.
10. Itās okay to love your story.
Iām going to end this post on another hot take because it is probably what I primarily felt early this morning as I typed up the last paragraph of this book. Iām not going to lieāI cried finishing this book lol. I ached finishing this book. It *hurt* to finish this book. I didnāt want to finish this book. What I wanted to do was shut my computer, and pretend the end was not coming, and come back four months from now to finish it, maybe. I wanted to hang onto my story because itās my story and I love it!
Yāall, this book is cringey. Itās melodramatic, juvenile in some places, comically serious in others. But itās mine, and I love it. Sometimes Iām ashamed of the writing in this bookāsometimes I think Iām getting worse. But itās my story, and I love! it!Ā
I think so many of us want to please other people! Or maybe thatās just me lol!! oh boy!! There were so many times I wanted to give up on this project because I thought others would find it cringey in places I too, thought were cringey, but simultaneously loved.
Iāve written for other people a lot in the past, and sometimes thoseĀ āother peopleā are just meāmany critical versions of me. Donāt forget about how much you love a story (for its quirks maybe, its clichĆ©s, itsĀ ābad writingā) before you finish it. A first draft only comes once and finishing a first draft is so wonderful, and even more so when you love that story. We got enough hate yāall, lets give our stories some love.Ā
So thatās it for this post! I still have five chapters to write writing updates for, so the party aināt over til itās over!!!
For my obligatory Oscarās speech! A special thanks to @sarahkelsiwritesāā for reading about these trash people for five years, and for enthusiastically contributing to their trash decisions (#do it for the tea)! And for reassuring me that the prose in this book is actually not as bad as I believe because I would never have finished this book without that pep talk lol. To @imdisappointedāā for helping me crack some of the toughest plot problems!!Ā You talk me out of problems and itās magic! And to my MOM @shaelinwritesāā (for being my mom) and also for all the kind/insightful things you say! Yāall get me through it!!!
And of course!! I thank all of YOU for following this journey of drafting Moth Work. My community on here never fails to amaze me, and Iām a big stan of you all!! Please tag me in your stuffāIād love to read about what youāre writing!
Hereās to finishing a book, but more importantly, to hoping I donāt make Moth Work a series lmaoo!!! *pops confetti*
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