Do Not Give Up
There’s a point in a first draft when everything feels wrong to me. The landscape looks wrong; nothing is where it’s supposed to be. The words I’ve written are not right and so I can’t see the words I want to write to move ahead. Everything was clear just a few days ago. Now it’s all a mess. One big mess.
It would be easy to quit. It would be easy to say it’s all wrong. I could delete. I could start over with a clean page. So full of possibilities, so neat. Or I could just go back to page one and rewrite even though I’m on page sixty. I could do that.
Don’t.
A novel, like life, is messy. A first draft is really messy. You have to push on. Do not abandon ship. Don’t. Get a draft down. It’s essential.
Remember, low expectations for your first draft. It’s the beginning, not the end. You’ll revise and edit. Allow yourself to write some crappy work in order to get to the good stuff.
E.L. Doctorow described writing a novel as being like traveling across the country on a dark highway. The car's headlights allow you to see a few feet ahead. That’s all you need to drive through the dark. Faith is a big part of writing a novel. (Also, it’s kind of a big part of driving a car in the dark but don’t think about that, especially when you’re driving).
Keep the faith.
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