In the past week, I have discovered a lot about myself as a writer. The biggest realization is that I am a discovery writer. Stories appear in my mind without warning, almost like they drop from the sky. I have no idea how it happens. They arrive whole, or at least alive, and my only real job should be to write them down as fast as I can before they disappear. I should not think too deeply in that moment. I should just catch them.
But what I have been doing instead is the opposite. I write a chapter, and then I immediately start polishing it until I drain all the magic out of it. I overwork it until my creative soul feels strangled. And that has turned into a problem. Because discovery writing does not want perfection. It wants speed. It wants space. It wants to exist first, before I shape it.
My job at this stage is to lay the bones. To get the story out of my head and onto the page. Write it. Leave it. Move on. Let the next chapter form in my mind on its own. I cannot explain how it works. It just happens, and my only task is to not interfere too early.
Because I have been polishing too much, too soon, I have started to fear something I have never feared before. That my creativity could actually die from being overworked. The text becomes lovely once it is finished, but this is not the moment to be finishing anything. Right now is the moment to produce. To let quantity come first, because quality will always arrive later.
I am currently on chapter five. I am trying to let the text come out of me and simply exist without judgment. Try to let it be. Try to fool my brain into thinking about what comes next, instead of obsessing about what already exists.
I know how the story ends. I have five chapters and the ending. Four chapters are missing. And I am just trusting that my brain will deliver them. If it does not, then the book will be four chapters shorter than planned. I guess we will see.
I am also terrified of the editing that waits for me once those missing chapters finally arrive. The whole place is so alive in my mind. I see every detail, and then I look at the half-finished text, which is just bones and scaffolding, and I know how much work will be needed to make it what it should be. I know how hard it will be to bring the earlier chapters up to the level of chapter two, which feels polished and alive.
It drives my brain a little crazy to have so many unfinished things sitting there. Some parts do not line up with newer parts. Some story elements contradict themselves. But I have to learn to live with that chaos and ignore it and just keep pushing the text out of me.
I do not understand how my brain works, but I am learning how to work with it. I am learning how to let it hallucinate stories without seeing them. And then I write them down. That is the whole process.
Writing is a weird business. That is all I can say for now
