I’ve been trying to write fiction. Lately, I haven’t written much. Last week, I was so earth-shatteringly tired I could have slept for seven days straight and it still wouldn’t have been enough.
Writing fiction is like a snowball. I can probably think of a better metaphor but this one is most vivid in my mind right now. I know, what a juxtaposition given the beautiful warm weather right now. Alas, the snowball is a story and the snow is the words. In the beginning, you need to invest more time and energy into the craft. You bend to pick up the snow and cradle it in your hands, you compact it and continuously reshape. You prop up the entire endeavour. It takes a while before you can put the snowball down and start to make easier contributions of snow. After much time, effort and dedication you’re eventually able to roll the snowball in the snow and it takes on a life of its own. At some point, you become a mere witness - the snowball gains traction all on its own. It hurtles downhill towards an inevitability. A story is born.
Once you get going, the story makes decisions by itself and informs you how it wants to be told. By that point, you’ve spent so much time close to its development that you’re actually inside it. That’s how it feels to me. In the last few months, I’ve been working on short stories of just a few thousand words and even at that length, the fictitious worlds I’ve created and blended from memory and truth are vividly alive.
However, if I spend time away from writing fiction, I suddenly become shy. The idea of reading back half-formed drafts feels like peering directly into an intimate part of myself. A version of me that I struggle to remember because she was so deeply engaged in a piece of work that feels almost alien to me now. Something I’ve distanced myself from. The bigger the story, the harder it is. Once a snowball, or a story, is of a certain size it takes more investment and heft. Reading through the entirety of a draft thousands of words long makes me increasingly uncomfortable. I’m intimidated by the words already written and terrified of the potential that I might want to scrap the whole thing. The thing I poured time and hope into. My catastrophizing is a means of aversion.
So, after last week, and during other periods of time where I break the rhythm of the tumbling snowball, I struggle to get it moving again. The trance has evaporated and getting an invitation back on the inside takes time.
It is the very essence of ‘Drafting’. It’s my pattern. The name for my Substack came to me because I was overflowing with half-baked projects and nearly-there ideas. Snippets and wisps would find me but I’d struggle to initiate a snowball even of the smallest stature. Things have changed a lot in the last two years (wtf - TWO years?) of writing on Substack. I have less crippling anxiety about my writing on the whole. I’m learning to run with writing more and get out of my own way. Putting words on the page and worrying about the refinement later. To even have any completed pieces of work that I’ve deemed a ‘final draft’ is a vast improvement. Celebrate the wins where you can.
For better or worse, last night I started a new snowball. It felt like the only way to get back. To build out another idea that’s been waiting patiently in the wings. One that’s fluttered right by me, trying to capture my attention. Words came easily and with each sentence, I could see the story’s structure becoming solid. I couldn’t face returning to one of the larger snowballs yet. I needed to go back to the beginning and remind myself of how I got there in the first place. The other snowballs won’t be abandoned or replaced, I won’t leave them out to melt. When the time is right, I’ll fight my fear to face them and wrestle to get them finished.
